People v. Oakland Water Front Co.

This is an action to determine adverse claims to real property, and for other incidental relief, instituted by the attorney general in the name and on behalf of the people of the state. All the defendants who are contesting the claims of the state demurred to the first amended complaint upon the general ground that it failed to state a cause of action, and a few of them demurred specially upon various other grounds. These demurrers were sustained by the superior court upon the sole ground, as appears by the terms of its order, that the said amended complaint did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. And the judge of said court being of the opinion that the defect could not be cured by amendment, leave to file a second amended complaint was denied, and judgment ordered to be entered for defendants. From the judgment entered in pursuance of said order this appeal is prosecuted.

Such being the case, the principal questions to be determined relate to the right of the plaintiff to any relief upon the facts admitted by the demurrer. There is, however, a preliminary question, jurisdictional in its nature, which must first be disposed of.

It is contended on behalf…

concurring. I concur in the j’udgment of reversal upon the ground that it does not clearly appear that the grant to the town of Oakland includes all the land described in the complaint in this action. The description in the complaint of the premises intended to be covered by the action is somewhat difficult to follow, and I cannot see that it does not embrace some land to the southward, not included in the grant to Oakland. This point, in justice to the respondents and the court below, should have been made in the latter court; but I do not see how the attorney general can be prevented from taking any position here from which he can defend the sufficiency of the complaint. I fully concur in the view expressed in the opinion of the chief justice, that the court below properly considered the said grant to the town of Oakland.