Johnson v. Los Angeles

This appeal involves the validity of a street assessment in proceedings taken under the Street Opening Act of 1903, supplemented by the Street Opening Bond Act of 1922 (Deering’s General Laws 1923, Acts 8198 and 8199, p. 3309 et seq.), known as the "Third Street project,” in the City of Los Angeles, California. The case is a companion case to Allen v. City of Los Angeles (L. A. No. 11866), ante, p. 235 [ 291 Pac. 393 ]. The facts are the same, with the exception that appellant Johnson neither protested the district, the improvement nor the assessment. The cases are presented on the same record and the same briefs. The questions involved in the Allen case are also involved here and on reconsideration we adhere to the views we have there announced.

Here, however, appellant Johnson urges an additional contention growing out of the following facts: Pursuant to section 18 of said act (Leering’s General Laws 1923, Act 8198), the board of public works completed a proposed assessment upon the property of said district and lodged it with the clerk of the council on June 20, 1928. On June 25th thereafter, thirty days’ notice was initiated by publication, inviting objections to said…

Dissenting. — I dissent. The theory of the ■ main opinion is that the city council itself had the same power to remake the assessment under section 19 of the Street Opening Act of 1903 as it would have had under section 21 of the Improvement Act of 1911, if the proceeding had been taken under the latter act. No attention is paid to the fact that the proceedings under review were taken under the act of 1903 prior to the amendment of section 19 thereof in 1929. (Stats. 1929, p. 1590.) Prior to that amendment the assessment was not the creature of the city council, but of the board of public-works. The council could not make a new assessment or, as was done here, increase or make over approximately eighteen per cent of the amount of the assessment without notice to the interested parties. The council sat as a quasi court of appeal to pass upon the objections to the assessment, and if a reassessment was deemed necessary, it should have ordered the board of public works, as provided in section 19 of the act of 1903, then in force, to make “a new assessment, upon which like proceedings shall be had, as in the case of an original assessment.” (See Cake v. City of Los Angeles, 164 Cal.…