Silva v. Reclamation District No. 1001
Silva v. Reclamation District No. 1001
Opinion of the Court
The action was to cancel and annul an assessment made for reclamation purposes. The district was organized in April, 1911, and it has. been in effective operation ever since. On the seventeenth day of July, 1911, the board of trustees of the district presented to the board of supervisors of Sutter County—in which county the greater portion of the lands of the district is situated, the residue being in Placer County—the original plans ;for reclamation. The usual proceedings were had and an assessment for $851,730 was levied upon the lands of the district and this was fully paid. This, however, was ¡insufficient to complete the contemplated work, and on September 25, 1914, the trustees of the district presented another report to the board of supervisors, showing the work already accomplished and the work to be done, together with its estimated cost, and asking for another assessment of five hundred thousand dollars. The request was granted, and the assessments were all paid except those of appellants herein and. one C. P. Roth. They contested the assessment in the superior court of Sutter County, and after trial had, their assessments were held to be invalid and they were canceled and annulled. Thereupon, the board of trustees proceeded in accordance with section 3466% of the Political Code to obtain a reassessment of the two tracts of land-owned by appellants and said Roth and they caused a modification and amplification to be made to their report of October 25, 1914, and filed it with said board of supervisors on April 8, 1916. The same commissioners who levied the second assessment were appointed by the supervisors' to make the reassessment on the lands of appellants and Roth. They proceeded with the work and made their report as required by law. Objections were made to this reassessment, but they were overruled by the board of *329 supervisors, and the report of the commissioners was approved and ratified. Thereafter, this action was brought in the superior court to annul said reassessment levied upon the lands of plaintiffs, but the judgment was against their contention, and from that judgment sustaining the action of said commissioners the appeal has been taken.
It may be stated, also, that the other important finding that the assessments were not levied on the various tracts of land belonging to appellants according to the respective benefits accruing thereto from said improvements would not be controlling, for the reason that a different apportionment was made by this assessment. But a more satisfactory and conclusive answer to the proposition is that we are herein dealing with a different cause of action. The said judgment of November 13, 1915, was based upon a cause of action, arising out of the assessment of September 25, 1914, whereas the cause of action involved herein must have grown out of the assessment made in 1916, after said former judgment was rendered.
*330 However, if the facts relating to the two assessments were identical or similar, the former judgment would be, of course, entitled to careful consideration, bnt it would not be controlling, since it was the judgment only of the trial court. The course pursued, it may be repeated, in reassessing appellants’ property, was taken by virtue of the authority conferred by said section 3466% of the Political Code providing: “In all cases in which an assessment shall have been levied or shall hereafter be levied for reclamation purposes upon the lands embraced within any reclamation district now or hereafter formed or created, is thereafter adjudged invalid by any court of competent jurisdiction, or shall be adjudged invalid as to any tract or tracts of land, within said district, or if, for any reason, any tract or tracts of land within such district shall not have been charged with said assessment, ... a subsequent reassessment of such tract or tracts of land may be made separately for the purpose of charging said land with its proper proportion of the costs of reclamation,” etc; The section further provides that such reassessment must be made and approved in the same manner as other assessments. '
*331
It is also suggested by respondent that the fact that these works have been in operation since July, 1911, that a large sum of money has been expended therefor, and that the work of reclamation has been done openly and without protest from said state reclamation board would raise a presumption of the acquiescence and approval of said board. It is further claimed that such question cannot be raised by *332 a property owner, but these considerations, while worthy of attention, we deem it unnecessary to determine.
But it appears that these commissioners had made the previous assessment and at that time had gone over all the land in the district. As to that Mr. Tarke testified: “Before the eight hundred and fifty-one thousand dollar assessment was put on we estimated the value of the land before reclamation; that is, we went all over the district and placed a value on the land—what it would be worth without reclamation according to the situation and according to the relative elevation ánd according to the quality of the land and the general situation of. the land. ’ ’ It would have been idle for them to do the same thing again. Assuming, therefore, for the sake of argument, that all of the lands should have been visited by the commissioners to enable them to make a proper reassessment of the lands of appellants and Roth only, the requirement was substantially met. Moreover, the showing of diligence was entirely in *333 adequate. Mr. Tarke was called as a witness by plaintiffs and interrogated as to what he did in making said reassessment, and there is no excuse for the failure .of appellants to ask him if he and his associates at that time visited the other lands in the district. The rule as to motions of this kind based upon such showing is quite familiar, and it is manifest that the court’s action in denying a new trial is amply justified.
It is probably not necessary to allude to the importance of the work of reclamation undertaken in this arid other districts and how largely it affects the welfare of the community and the state. Indeed, this consideration has been forcibly and even eloquently set forth by the supreme court in some of the cases cited. The work should not, of course, be impeded by vexatious litigation nor jeopardized by attaching too much weight to unimportant matters of procedure. On the other hand, notwithstanding the great importance of these schemes, the substantial rights of the property owners must be protected, but in the present instance we are led to believe that appellants have suffered no legal injury and the judgment is affirmed.
Chipman, P. J., and Hart, J., concurred.
A petition to have the cause heard in the supreme court, after judgment in the district court of appeal, was denied by the supreme court on July 28, 1919.
All the Justices concurred.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- CHARLES F. SILVA Et Al., Appellants, v. RECLAMATION DISTRICT No. 1001 Et Al., Respondents
- Cited By
- 11 cases
- Status
- Published