Newport Building Corp. v. City of Santa Ana

This is an appeal by defendant from a judgment in favor of plaintiff for refund of fees allegedly paid under coercion.

Pacts

Plaintiff owned land in defendant city. It prepared and graded said land for subdivision purposes, subdivided it into tracts of residential building lots, and built thereon for purposes of sale, single family residences. Tract 3296 consisted of 97 lots. On May 3,1954, defendant enacted chapter 3 of article IX, under the title 1 ‘ Subdivision regulations, ’ ’ in which chapter is provided a detailed set of regulations covering design, improvement, advisory agency and map preparation and approval procedure as is referred to in Business and Professions Code sections 11000 to 11709. See particularly section 9371 of the ordinance for payment to the city engineer of a fee of $25.00 plus $1.00 for each lot upon submission of the final map to the city engineer.

On January 16, 1956, to become effective 30 days thereafter, defendant adopted a new ordinance which asserts, in essence, that subdividing real property differs from other businesses, that it is a short term venture productive of large profits; that a license tax on such business must be imposed as a single…