Hadacheck v. Sebastian

HADACHECK v. SEBASTIAN, CHIEF OF POLICE OF THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES.

Error to the Supreme Court of the State of California.

No. 32. Submitted October 22, 1915 — Decided December 20, 1915.

165 California, 416, affirmed.

Habeas corpus. The facts, which involve the constitutionality under the due process and equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of an ordinance of Los Angeles prohibiting brick yards within certain limits of the city, are stated in the opinion.

Mr. Emmett H. Wilson and Mr. G. C. DeGarmo for plaintiff in error. Mr. Albert Lee Stephens, Mr. Charles S. Burnell and Mr. Warren L. Williams for defendant in error.

The report occupies pages 394 through 414 of volume 239 of the United States Reports. The opinion of the Court, delivered by Mr. Justice McKenna, begins at page 404 and closes at page 414. The report records no separate opinion.

[239 U.S. 394] “While the police power of the State cannot be so arbitrarily exercised as to deprive persons of their property without due process of law or deny them equal protection of the law, it is one of the most essential powers of Government and one of the least limitable — in fact, the imperative necessity for its existence precludes any limitation upon it when not arbitrarily exercised.”

[239 U.S. 394] “A vested interest cannot because of conditions once obtaining be asserted against the proper exercise of the police power — to so hold would preclude development. Chicago & Alton R. R. v. Tranbarger, 238 U. S. 67.”

[239 U.S. 394] “There must be progress, and in its march private interests must yield to the good of the community.”

[239 U.S. 394] “The police power may be exerted under some conditions to declare that under particular circumstances and in particular localities specified businesses which are not nuisances per se (such as livery stables, as in Reinman v. Little Rock, 237 U. S. 171, and brick yards, as in this case) are to be deemed nuisances in fact and law.”

[239 U.S. 395] “An ordinance of Los Angeles prohibiting the manufacturing of bricks within specified limits of the city, held, in an action brought by the owner of brick clay deposits and a brick factory, not to be unconstitutional as depriving him of his property without due process of law, or as denying him equal protection of the laws.”

[239 U.S. 395] “165 California, 416, affirmed.”

[239 U.S. 404] “Habeas corpus prosecuted in the Supreme Court of the State of California for the discharge of plaintiff in error from the custody of defendant in error, Chief of Police of the City of Los Angeles.”

[239 U.S. 404] “Plaintiff in error, to whom we shall refer as petitioner, was convicted of a misdemeanor for the violation of an ordinance of the City of Los Angeles which makes it unlawful for any person to establish or operate a brick yard or brick kiln, or any establishment, factory or place for the manufacture or burning of brick within described limits in the city. Sentence was pronounced against him [239 U.S. 405] and he was committed to the custody of defendant in error as Chief of Police of the City of Los Angeles.”

[239 U.S. 405] Editorial summary of the petition, not reproduced verbatim. The petition alleged that petitioner owned a tract within the prohibited district containing a valuable bed of clay of great quality for brickmaking, worth not less than one hundred thousand dollars per acre for that purpose and not exceeding sixty thousand for any other; that he had erected expensive machinery for manufacturing brick, had operated the yard for seven years without complaint, and that the clay could not be transported elsewhere. It alleged also that the ordinance's district boundaries were drawn to prohibit his and one other brick yard while like operations continued elsewhere, and that the ordinance fostered a monopoly and denied equal protection.

[239 U.S. 408] “There was a denial of the allegations that the brick yard was conducted or could be conducted sanitarily or was not offensive to health. And there were affidavits supporting the denials. In these it was alleged that the fumes, gases, smoke, soot, steam and dust arising from petitioner's brick-making plant have from time to time caused sickness and serious discomfort to those living in the vicinity.”

[239 U.S. 410] “It is to be remembered that we are dealing with one of the most essential powers of government, one that is the least limitable. It may, indeed, seem harsh in its exercise, usually is on some individual, but the imperative necessity for its existence precludes any limitation upon it when not exerted arbitrarily. A vested interest cannot be asserted against it because of conditions once obtaining. Chicago & Alton R. R. v. Tranbarger, 238 U. S. 67, 78. To so hold would preclude development and fix a city forever in its primitive conditions. There must be progress, and if in its march private interests are in the way they must yield to the good of the community.”

[239 U.S. 411] “There is a distinction between Reinman v. Little Rock and the case at bar. There a particular business was prohibited which was not affixed to or dependent upon its locality; it could be conducted elsewhere. Here, it is contended, the latter condition does not exist, and it is alleged that the manufacture of brick must necessarily be carried on where suitable clay is found and that the clay on petitioner's property cannot be transported to some other locality. This is not urged as a physical impossibility but only, counsel say, that such transportation and the transportation of the bricks to places where they could be used in construction work would be prohibitive ‘from a financial standpoint.’ But upon the evidence the Supreme Court considered the case, as we understand its opinion, from the standpoint of the offensive effects of the operation of a brick yard and not from the deprivation of the deposits of clay . . . .”

[239 U.S. 412] “In the present case there is no prohibition of the removal of the brick clay; only a prohibition within the designated locality of its manufacture into bricks. And to this feature of the ordinance our opinion is addressed. Whether other questions would arise if the ordinance were broader, and opinion on such questions, we reserve.”

[239 U.S. 414] “We must accord good faith to the city in the absence of a clear showing to the contrary and an honest exercise of judgment upon the circumstances which induced its action.”

[239 U.S. 414] “Judgment affirmed.”

Editorial note. This record is a research edition, not a substitute for the official reporter. It reproduces the Reporter of Decisions apparatus (caption, docket, counsel, and syllabus) in full and reproduces the opinion of the Court in extended verbatim excerpts, arranged under the Court's own sequence of analysis, each bracketed with the official United States Reports page on which the passage appears. Every quotation mark in this record encloses the Court's or the Reporter's own words.

Editorial note. Three limitations are declared. First, the arguments of counsel printed at pages 395 through 404 are not reproduced. Second, the recital of the petition (pages 405 through 408) is largely summarised because it consists of the petitioner's own allegations rather than the Court's analysis; the portion of the recital dealing with the traverse and the affidavits is quoted verbatim. Third, the discussion of the equal-protection contention (pages 412 through 413) is presented in editorial summary because its holding is exhausted by the sentence reproduced from page 413 in the discussion below. Obvious optical-scanning defects in the digitised bound volume have been silently corrected against the surrounding text; no substantive word has been altered, modernised, or paraphrased inside a quotation.

Editorial note. Hadacheck owned some three acres in Los Angeles containing a bed of clay of unusual quality for brickmaking, purchased and improved for that purpose before the surrounding land was annexed to the city or occupied for dwellings. The land was worth about $800,000 as a brickyard and some $60,000 for any other use, and the clay could not practically be worked elsewhere. The city thereafter adopted an ordinance making it a misdemeanour to operate a brickyard or brick kiln within a defined district that included his property, and he was arrested and held in custody by the chief of police.

Editorial note. Hadacheck sought habeas corpus in the Supreme Court of California, which discharged the writ and remanded him to custody, sustaining the ordinance. He brought the case to the Supreme Court on writ of error, which affirmed.

Editorial note. The ordinance did not deprive the petitioner of property without due process of law or deny him the equal protection of the laws. A municipality may prohibit within defined limits an occupation that, however lawful in itself and however long conducted, has become offensive or injurious to the health and comfort of an area that has grown residential; the resulting destruction of the value of the property for that occupation does not make the prohibition invalid. The rule derived is that a restriction on the use of land, enacted for the protection of the public health and comfort, is not defeated by the antiquity of the use, by the owner's prior investment, or by the magnitude of the loss, so long as the restriction is not shown to be arbitrary or a mere pretext for discrimination.

Editorial note. Mr. Justice McKenna observed that the police power is one of the most essential of the powers of government and least capable of limitation, and that its exercise must in the nature of things advance some interests at the expense of others; otherwise no municipal development could occur. He rejected the argument that the ordinance was invalid because it forbade the manufacture of brick but not the removal of the clay, and the argument that its district boundaries were arbitrary, noting that the legislative body is entitled to draw lines and that the record disclosed no more than a difference of judgment about where they should fall. The claim of discriminatory enforcement was rejected on the record as presented.

Editorial note. Hadacheck is the pivotal case between Mugler and Euclid: it accepts the noxious-use premise but applies it to an industry not intrinsically immoral, in a setting where the harm consists in the incompatibility of the use with its neighbours. It thereby supplies the practical foundation for districting, and it is the source of the rule that the sequence of arrival — the owner came first, the houses came later — is not decisive. Its treatment of severe diminution in value later became one of the poles between which Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon and Penn Central drew the regulatory-takings line.

Editorial note. Followed. Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365 (1926), relied on the districting reasoning in sustaining comprehensive zoning. Applied and repeatedly cited in the regulatory-takings line, including Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978), as an instance in which a substantial loss of value did not establish a taking, and Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992), which distinguished it because some beneficial use of the land remained.

Editorial note. Read with U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1, and the treatise chapters on nuisance, on zoning and the police power, and on regulatory takings.