Court Opinion

ID: 9545852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:20:41.2869+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:38.803146
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J.
This is a proceeding to review an order of the Los Angeles superior court which denied a motion to remit previously ordered punishment for contempt of that court. We have concluded that the punishment should be remitted.
In a suit by the State of California against municipal corporations which discharged their sewage through the Los Angeles sewage system into Santa Monica Bay, thus creating a nuisance, it was ordered, in material part, that the corporations and their officers “arrange” for payment to Los Angeles of the respective corporations’ shares of the cost of a new disposal plant to be built by Los Angeles. (People v. City of Los Angeles (1948), 83 Cal.App.2d 627 [189 P.2d 489]; hearing denied; certiorari denied, 335 U.S. 852 [69 S.Ct. 80, 93 L.Ed. 400].) The city of Vernon and its then eouncilmen, petitioners in this proceeding, did not within the time limited comply with the mandatory injunction; instead they continued, under the advice of their counsel, to seek by legal procedures to avoid compliance with' the injunction. The trial court ordered that each of them pay a fine; that the eouncilmen be confined in the county jail for five days; and that they further be confined in jail until they arranged the ordered financing.
The cities and their eouncilmen sought review of the contempt orders. We affirmed the orders, but said, “The conduct of the petitioning eouncilmen which was found contemptuous was not the conduct of private individuals but that of public officials protecting the interests of the municipality which they were elected to serve, acting under the advice of counsel; and since the making of the contempt order they have fully complied with the requirements of the injunction. The argument is made on behalf of petitioners that by reason of those facts the punishment of the individual petitioners by fine and imprisonment is so extreme as to be beyond the range of proper judicial discretion. Such argument, however, is not a proper one to address to this court at this time. It includes facts not all of which were before the trial court at the time of the proceedings under review. Our power on review on the present record is limited, by section 1074 of the Code of Civil Procedure, to a determination ‘whether the inferior tribunal . . . has regularly pursued the authority of *841such tribunal, ’ and the reasonableness of the punishment cannot be passed upon in these review proceedings [citation]. The trial court, however, . . . may remit the unexecuted provision of the judgment that petitioners personally be punished for contempt. The argument based on the mitigating circumstances above mentioned may in all propriety be addressed to that court, and it is to be presumed that it will take into consideration such mitigating circumstances and make an order appropriate in the premises.” (City of Vernon v. Superior Court (1952), 38 Cal.2d 509, 519-520 [241 P.2d 243]; see, also, Leonis v. Superior Court (1952), 38 Cal.2d 527 [241 P.2d 253]; City of Culver City v. Superior Court (1952), 38 Cal.2d 535 [241 P.2d 258].)
Petitioners moved the trial court for an order remitting the contempt judgments and sentences. Testimony, stipulations, and argument as to the above mentioned mitigating circumstances were presented. As to its previous orders that the individual petitioners be imprisoned until they complied with certain provisions of the injunction in People v. City of Los Angeles (1948), supra, 83 Cal.App.2d 627, it was unquestioned, and the trial court necessarily determined, that those provisions of the injunction had been complied with by such petitioners without their imprisonment and it ordered that that portion of the commitments be not enforced. But notwithstanding the circumstances it refused to remit the portions of the commitments which provided for fine and imprisonment as punishment, and the present proceeding followed. It is, of course, a new proceeding upon a new record.
The trial court based its refusal to remit the punishment upon the following view: “ [P] radically nothing was done by these particular contemnors prior to the time that they were found guilty of contempt and sentenced. ... It has been urged that they were doing their duty to their cities and they were willing to do whatever was necessary, but the fact remains that if they did so state it was merely lip service and, as a matter of fact, they did practically nothing. ... I failed to hear them urge anything in mitigation that has been done by the parties . . . except that which they were finally compelled to do, and nothing more than should have been done long years before. . . . [At the hearing on the motions to remit, there was] practically nothing brought to the attention of the Court that had not been brought to its attention at the time it found the contemnors guilty and sen*842tenced them for contempt. If the Court had granted the motions in toto it would have been in substance a notice to City Councilmen that they could fail to comply with a court’s order in a matter of this character and probably escape punishment, even though they permitted years to elapse from the time of the original judgment, and a long period of time to elapse after the contempt order and sentence. . . . They cannot hide back of the skirts of their attorneys.”
Petitioners take issue with the quoted statement of the trial court substantially in its entirety and urge that their contempt, if any, was not, as the trial court indicated, flagrant and deliberate. They contend that under section 1075 of the Code of Civil Procedure this court in the instant proceeding may remit the portions of the commitments which impose punishment. That section provides in material part that, after hearing on petition for writ of review, the court may “give judgment, either affirming or annulling, or modifying the proceedings below.”
The attorney general contends that this court is without jurisdiction to review the reasonableness of the order denying the motion to remit punishment. He urges that our power is limited by the rule that, in reviewing an order which imposes punishment for contempt, we cannot inquire into the reasonableness of punishment which is within statutorily authorized limits. (See Ex parte Ah Men (1888), 77 Cal. 198, 203 [19 P. 380, 11 Am.St.Rep. 263]; Seventy-Six Land & Water Co. v. Superior Court (1892), 93 Cal. 139, 143 [28 P. 813]; Crocker v. Conrey (1903), 140 Cal. 213, 218 [73 P. 1006]; People v. Latimer (1911), 160 Cal. 716, 720 [117 P. 1051] ; Lindsley v. Superior Court (1926), 76 Cal.App. 419, 433-434 [245 P. 212]; In re Carboni (1941), 46 Cal.App.2d 605, 614 [116 P.2d 453].) However, as previously stated, this is not such a proceeding.
The then councilmen of the city, when they refrained from obeying the mandatory injunction, were acting as public officials, pursuant to advice of counsel, in performance of what they believed to be their duty to the city. .The basic question whether they were violating the injunction was still in dispute until our decisions in the Vernon, Leonis, and Culver City eases, supra. Until those decisions were rendered petitioners could not know that independent litigation instituted by them against the city of Los Angeles was not sufficient compliance with the injunction in People v. City of Los Angeles, supra. Petitioners not only had a right to pursue (of *843course, only in good faith) every legal remedy apparently available to them but, as public officers, charged with the administration of a trust, they may well have felt bound to pursue the remedies unto which counsel advised them.
The fact that there was disagreement among the members of this court as to whether petitioners had made the “arrangements” required by the mandatory injunction (see opinions of Justice Edmonds dissenting in part and concurring in part in the Vernon, Leonis, and Culver City cases, pp. 520, 532, and 542 of 38 Cal.2d; see, also, dissents of Justice Carter, pp. 522, 532, and 542 of 38 Cal.2d) indicates that petitioners were not frivolously flouting the commands of the superior court, and the fact that petitioners immediately completed, and apparently must have previously prepared to make, those “arrangements” when this court decided that they were in contempt seems to conclusively confirm their lack of deliberately contemptuous conduct. The trial court in the present proceeding has, in effect, quite obviously determined that it is not necessary to punish petitioners in order to secure performance of the injunction, for it has determined that they have performed. The punishment which is left, then (which is the maximum for any contempt), is for pursuing in good faith what they were advised by counsel and believed were legal remedies available to the couneilmen and to the city which they represented. In these circumstances we are of the opinion that it was a manifest abuse of discretion of the trial court to refuse to remit the punishment of the individual petitioners and the municipal corporation which could act only through the individual petitioners.
The attorney general urges that the trial court is without jurisdiction to remit the punishment of petitioner John B. Leonis because he was actually committed to jail and remained there for a short time. In support of this contention the attorney general cites Barry v. Superior Court (1891), 91 Cal. 486, 488 [27 P. 763], and People v. McAllister (1940), 15 Cal.2d 519, 526 [102 P.2d 1072], (See, also, In re Barry (1892), 94 Cal. 562 [29 P. 1109]; In re Moore (1928), 93 Cal.App. 488, 490 [269 P. 664].) These cases are not controlling here. The McAllister case affirmed an order denying a motion to modify a final judgment of conviction of crime. The Barry and Moore cases do not concern remission of punishment but, rather, take the position that a trial court, after it has issued one commitment in a contempt proceeding, is without power *844to issue a second and different commitment therein for the same contempt.
Por the reasons above stated, the order under review is modified to remit the previously ordered punishment.
Gibson, C. J., Traynor, J., Spence, J., and MeComb, J. pro tem., concurred. Shenk, J., being disqualified, did not participate.