People ex rel. Jacobs v. Kruger

         I. The city of San Francisco is surveyed upon two different and distinctly marked plans.

         Market street is the division line between these two surveys. North of Market street the city is laid out by lines running at right angles with the points of the compass. South of Market street the survey is in right angles diagonally to the points of the compass.

         Theproperty named in the complaint belongs to the northern survey; East street belongs to the southern survey, and could not be introduced into the northern survey without an awkward disarrangement of its plan.

         That East street exists between Folsom and Market is shown by the map of the city from the time of the survey. As to the width of the street, it is an immaterial question.

         2. The only reliance of appellant to show that East street exists and extends north of Market street, is the language of the Act of 1851: " To Provide for the Disposition of certain Property of the State of California," commonly known as " The Water Lot Bill." The language is--" thence northerly on the eastern side of East street to its point of intersection with the northern side of Jackson street."

         It is this expression which is alone not only to establish and dedicate a street, but to cut up and disarrange one plan of survey by the introduction of a street totally lacking in conformity. This will not be supposed to be the object of the Legislature, unless it is expressed in unmistakable terms.

         In the construction of statutes, the first great point is to get at and fix the object of the law, and then to construe it so as to favor the object, and to repel every thing foreign to the object, unless the enactment of such foreign ingredient is explicit and unavoidable. (Dobbins v. The Board of Supervisors , 5 Cal. 414.)

         The Water Lot Bill had two objects: one which was the principal, and the other auxiliary and essential to the first. The main object was to convey certain property out of the State; the auxiliary object was to fix the exact boundary lines of the property granted, and, as a necessary consequence, to fix the " permanent water front" of the city. There is no such object in the act as that of establishing or dedicating streets. It uses the names of streets already established and fixed upon the map of the city for the purpose of dedicating a line.

         At that time East street on the map of the city stopped at Market street. Not a word of the Water Lot Act extends it; but the water front line is made to run on the eastern line of East street to its intersection with Jackson.

         Now here the subject matter is " the line; " that is, the water front. This water front is to run " on the eastern line of East street to its intersection," etc. Not to the intersectionof East street with Jackson, but to the intersection of its eastern line; that is to say, the eastern line protracted to Jackson street.

         Every line is indefinite in extent. Establish it once, and mathematically it goes round the world. Therefore, a line when once established may be referred to as descriptive of its own position, or of anything else which it may be useful to affect at any distance from the place where it is first laid.

         3. The Water Lot Act conferred upon the city a term in the property of ninety-nine years; and the case shows that at this time the property in question was a part of the open bay of San Francisco, covered with water, never had been surveyed, nor even platted upon any map as lots and streets. Whilst yet in this condition the title of the city became vested in respondent by a regular sale, and it consequently follows that if the street was not established and dedicated by the terms of the Water Lot Bill, then it never could be done, except by regular process of condemnation, accompanied with full compensation to respondent; so that any subsequent ordinances or orders of the city authorities, which attempt to open or establish it, are invalid. (Gunter v. Geary , 1 Cal. 65; San Francisco v. Scott , 4 Id. 116; McCauley v. Weller , 12 Id. 528; Bensley v. Mountain Lake Water Company , 13 Id. 313.)

         4. There are but two modes of making a public street or road--one is by dedication, the other by direction of law, accompanied with condemnation. Dedication may be by user and lapse of time, or by the acts of the party, direct or indirect--direct, as by deed; indirect, as by selling lots or land bounding on a street, or so shown by a plat of survey. Neither of these methods has been shown in this case. Direction of law will not be presumed against the rights of the owner. It must be affirmatively and specifically shown.

         JUDGES: Baldwin, J. delivered the opinion of the Court. Cope, J. concurring.

         OPINION

          BALDWIN, Judge

         We take the same view of the main question in this case as that taken by the referee and the District Court.

         The question is, whether the street on which it is claimed the defendant intruded--namely, East street, in the city of San Francisco--was legally established to the water line prior to the passing of the city title to the defendant or his predecessor. It is not pretended that any street was actually laid out to the bay prior to the sale by the Sheriff of this lot of defendant's as the property of the city; but the appellants insist that, by the terms of the Water Lot Bill of 1851, the line of East street was extended to the water front. By that bill, the State granted to the city certain property for ninety-nine years; and the boundaries are given, a part of which is as follows: " Thence northerly on the eastern line of East street to its point of intersection with the northern side of Jackson street." But this phrase was not designed to lay off a street or to protract the line of a street already existing. The Legislature might well trust the city with such police and municipal regulation. The only object was to fix a boundary in order to show what was conveyed. This could as well be done by giving the course, or the imaginary or real line of the given street, as by opening and establishing the street to the desired point and making it the boundary. The line protracted from East street to its point of intersection with the northern side of Jackson street, would give this idea and answer this purpose of the Legislature, and it was not at all necessary in this indirect and collateral way for the Legislature to go to the trouble of establishing a street for the city of San Francisco; and we cannot presume, either from the language or the reason of the act, that such was the Legislative design.

         It follows that, as the ground occupied by the defendant belonged to the city, and the defendant succeeded to the city title before any acts of the city authorities were taken to turn it into a street, the acts are without effect upon the defendant, since the proper proceedings were not taken to condemn it or subject it to the public use.

         There is nothing in the point that, as East street had been dedicated on the old plan of the city, this was sufficient to extend the street as a public highway beyond its first limits and to the bay.

         Judgment affirmed.