105 P. 122 | Cal. | 1909
This action was brought to quiet title to a piece of land and the schoolhouse thereon formerly within the limits of plaintiff school district and used by the district for public school purposes. Judgment passed for defendant school district, and from that judgment and from the order denying its motion for a new trial plaintiff appeals.
The facts are stipulated, subject, as to some of them, to objections touching their admissibility. From these facts it appears that plaintiff for many years past has been and still is a school district of Los Angeles County. In 1889, the real property in controversy was deeded to the trustees of plaintiff "to be used as a schoolhouse, lot and ground." For such purposes plaintiff held and used the property until in November, 1903, when the city of Hollywood was incorporated, with which incorporation came into existence the Hollywood City School District, defendant herein. The school property in question was included, on the incorporation of the city of Hollywood and the organization of the Hollywood City School District, within the corporate limits of the latter, and is still included therein. The remaining portion of the Pass School District, not within the corporate limits of the city of Hollywood, continued as a school district under the name of the Pass School District. No petition has been filed on behalf of the existing Pass School District for annexation to the Hollywood City School District, as provided in section 1576 of the Political Code. The question presented may be thus stated: What, under the indicated circumstances, is the disposition made by the law of the real property of such corporation owned and used for the corporate purposes when, by a change in the boundaries, that property falls within the territorial limits of a new corporation organized for identical purposes? Or, wording it differently, did the title, dominion, power, and control over the land in controversy pass to the Hollywood City School District, or did they remain where formerly they had been, with the Pass School District? So far as this state is concerned, this question would seem to have been conclusively answered in favor of respondent by such cases as LosAngeles County v. Orange County,
School districts of this state are public quasi municipal corporations. (Hughes v. Ewing,
The legislative power being full and complete over the matter, as a part of that power it may make provision for the *419
division of the property and the apportionment of the debts of the old corporation, when a portion of its territory and public property are transferred to the jurisdiction of another corporation. But in the absence of such provision, the rule of the common law obtains, and that rule leaves the property where it is found, and the debt upon the original debtor. (Johnson v.San Diego,
To the contention that a transfer of ownership thus accomplished works the taking of property without due process of law, it should be sufficient to point out that in all such cases the beneficial owner of the fee is the state itself, and that its agencies and mandatories — the various public and municipal corporations in whom the title rests — are essentially nothing but trustees of the state, holding the property and devoting it to the uses which the state itself directs. The transfer of title without due process of law, of which appellant so bitterly complains, is nothing more, in effect, than the naming by the state of other trustees to manage property which it owns and to manage the property for the same identical uses and purposes to which it was formerly devoted. In point of law, then, the beneficial title to the estate is not affected at all. All that is done is to transfer the legal title under the same trust from one trustee to another. In this sense the trustees of the Hollywood City School District became, by operation of law, successors to the trustees of *420
the Pass School District, as is directly held in Allen v. SchoolTown of Macey,
Even if such well-established principles could be set aside under the plea that they work injustice in the individual case, this plea here presented is without merit. The state is profoundly interested in the education of its young, but has no deep concern over the personality of the trustees who shall administer this trust, so long as the administration is in the orderly form of law. But to relieve against the possibility of injustice being worked by the operation of the rule which might, without recompense, take a schoolhouse away from one district and assign it to another, this state has made explicit provision whereby the use of the school under the changed conditions may still be open to the children within the territory to which it originally belonged. This provision is found in section 1576 of the Political Code. But the residents within the plaintiff district have not seen fit to avail themselves of it.
We are unable to perceive, therefore, that the rule adopted in this state either works injustice to plaintiff or does violence to any of its constitutional rights. Nor, to the last proposition which appellant urges, — namely, that the weight of authority is contrary to that laid down in this state, can assent be granted. The authorities which he cites are Wynona v. School District,
The Minnesota case unquestionably holds with appellant's contention, but it stands in single opposition to an otherwise unbroken current of authority. In this connection we have *421 heretofore cited the decisions of the supreme court of the United States and of many sister states, with the text writers thereon.
The Minnesota case is expressly disapproved in Bloomfield v.Glen Ridge,
The language of the supreme court of Kansas in Board ofEducation v. School Trustees is obiter, and later was expressly disapproved in City of Wellington v. Wellington Township,
The judgment and order appealed from are therefore affirmed.
Melvin, J., and Lorigan, J., concurred.
Hearing in Bank denied. *422