Key System Transit Co. v. City of Oakland

An appeal by defendant City of Oakland, a municipal corporation, and certain of its officers from a judgment enjoining the enforcement of ordinance numbered 4240, N. S., adopted October 1, 1928, which required all persons operating electric street-cars within the city to maintain upon each of said cars while containing passengers a motorman and a conductor.

On December 19, 1928, the district attorney of Alameda County instituted a prosecution against the plaintiff and one of its employees, charging a violation of the ordinance in that they operated a one-man street-car on what is known as the “Twenty-third Avenue street car line”, which is wholly within the municipality. A plea of not guilty was entered, and the present action was brought to enjoin the prosecution on the grounds that the municipality was without power to pass the ordinance, and that, assuming it had jurisdiction to regulate the manner of operating cars, the ordinance was an unreasonable exercise of the police power.

The material provisions of the ordinance are:

The trial court found that plaintiff operates a street railway within the municipality and elsewhere in the counties of Alameda and Contra Costa; that…