L.A. Ry. v. City of L.A.

This is an appeal by the plaintiff—a street-railway corporation—from a judgment of the superior court denying its prayer for an injunction restraining the defendant from interfering with the exercise of an alleged franchise. The record consists of the pleadings, certain stipulated facts, and the decree, from which it appears that, by an ordinance of the city of Los Angeles, duly adopted May 11, 1897, the predecessors of plaintiff were granted a franchise to construct and operate a street-railway over and along certain streets of that city—the work of construction to be commenced within six months, and completed within eighteen months from the passage of the ordinance. By a subsequent ordinance the time of completion was extended six months, but at the end of this extended time—May 11,1899—only one and three-quarter miles out of four and three-quarter miles of the projected road had been built, leaving one mile at one end and two miles at the other end of the route covered by the franchise entirely vacant and unoccupied, in which condition it remained until May 1, 1903, a period of four years. One of the express conditions contained in the ordinance granting the franchise was the…