Opinion
Rehearing Granted May 28, 1931.
Application by George Mefferd and another for a writ of habeas corpus.
Application denied, writ discharged, and defendants remanded.
Superseding opinion in 292 P. 988.
COUNSEL
William P. Redmond, of Los Angeles, for petitioners.
U.S. Webb, Atty. Gen., Alberta Belford, Clyde P. Harrell, Jr., and Frank Richards, Deputy Attys. Gen., and Erwin P. Werner, City Atty., George A. Dockweiler, Deputy City Atty., Charles P. Johnson, City Prosecutor, Joe W. Matherly, and John L. Bland, Deputy City Prosecutors, all of Los Angeles, for respondent.
OPINION
RICHARDS, J.
The petitioners were charged by a complaint filed in the municipal court in and for the city of Los Angeles on January 3, 1930, with a misdemeanor, consisting in the violation of the California Fruit, Nut, and Vegetable Standardization Act of 1927, as amended in 1929 (St. 1927, p. 1845, as amended by St. 1929, p. 102), in the willful and unlawful mislabeling of grapefruit belonging to and being packed and sold by the defendants, through the placing thereon of false and misleading words, to wit, by stamping upon said grapefruit or the wrapper of each individual one thereof the word ‘Imperial,’ and by thereafter selling and offering for sale said grapefruit, representing the same to be grapefruit that had been grown and raised in the county of Imperial, state of California, then and there knowing said representation to be false and untrue. There were three counts in the complaint in which, with certain variations in statement, the identical charge was made. The defendants were also and in a separate complaint filed upon the same date charged with another misdemeanor in alleged violation of said act, consisting in the averment that the defendants did willfully and unlawfully pack and cause to be packed, sold, and offered for sale for transport grapefruit, the juice of which did not at the time contain soluble solids equal to or in excess of five and one-half parts to every part of acid contained in said juice, as required by section 20 of said act as amended in 1929 (St. 1929, p. 1585). Having been brought to trial upon these two charges, which were consolidated for the purpose of trial, the defendants, being tried together, were found guilty upon each of said charges. They moved for a new trial, and, the same being denied, they filed their notice of appeal to the appellate division of the superior court of the county of Los Angeles. Thereafter and on August 13, 1930, said appellate division rendered and entered its decision affirming the judgment of the trial court, and on August 19, 1930, denied a rehearing from its decision. Thereupon, and on August 25, 1930, the petitioners applied for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court of Appeal in and for the Second District, Division 2, which court upon a hearing of the writ granted the same, and, upholding the contention of the petitioners as to the illegality of their confinement under said judgment of conviction, ordered their discharge; whereupon the people applied for a rehearing in said court, and, the same being denied, the Attorney General filed an application for a hearing in this court under the provisions of section 1506 of the Penal Code as added in 1927 (St. 1927, p. 1061). Said application having been granted and a hearing had thereon, the cause is now submitted to this court for decision.
The first contention which the petitioners for said writ urged before the appellate tribunal and here urge is that the evidence educed before the municipal court was insufficient to justify the decision of said tribunal finding them guilty of a violation of the provisions of section 10 of said act. In support of this contention, the petitioners presented as an exhibit to their said petition certain excerpts from the evidence presented at the trial, and which, according to their contention, showed that the grapefruit with the mislabeling of which they were charged was in fact grown in the Imperial Valley. The evidence thus produced does not purport to constitute the entire body of evidence which was before the municipal court upon the trial of appears that there was other evidence, chiefly that of experts, which tended to show that the considerable number of separate consignments and samples of grapefruit shown to have been sold to various retailers by these defendants had not been grown in Imperial Valley. Commenting upon this situation, the appellate division of the superior court of Los Angeles county, in affirming the judgment of the municipal court, said: ‘There was testimony, mainly by experts, which was sufficient, if believed, to uphold the conviction; while cross-examination and opposing testimony might be regarded as considerably discrediting the testimony of these experts these matters were for the trial court, and its action in accepting the expert testimony is not subject to reversal by us.’ Upon an application for habeas corpus we will not consider conflicts in the evidence upon which the assailed judgment is founded unless at least the entire record has been brought before us.
The petitioners next contended before the appellate tribunal and here contend that the California Fruit, Nut, and Vegetable Standardization Act (Stats. 1927, p. 1845), as amended in 1929, is unconstitutional and void for the several reasons set forth on their petition, and they undertake to enforce their contentions as presented therein with a general assault upon the provisions of said act, with most of which we are not concerned in this proceeding, for the reason that the petitioners herein were not injuriously affected by any of the provisions of the act other than those for the specific violation of which they were accused and convicted in said municipal court.
We shall first deal with the specific complaint made and filed in said court charging the defendants with a misdemeanor consisting in the specific violation of section 10 of the act, the details of which are hereinabove set forth. Section 10 of the act as amended in 1929 (Stats. 1929, p. 105, § 4) provides in part as follows: ‘No containers or subcontainers of fresh or dried fruits, nuts or vegetables, or label or lining of any such container, or wrapper of any fruit or vegetable, or placard used in connection therewith and having reference to such fruits, nuts or vegetables, shall bear any false or misleading statement or words.’ The petitioners argue that the foregoing provisions of the act are unconstitutional and void as consisting in an unwarranted interference with the liberty of individuals in the packing and marketing of their grapefruit product, and in support of their insistence in that regard chiefly rely upon certain California cases wherein other and earlier fruit standardization acts have been held to be in some respects unconstitutional. Among these is the case of Ex parte Hayden, 147 Cal. 649, 82 P. 315, 1 L. R. A. (N. S.) 184, 109 Am. St. Rep. 183, wherein the act of 1903 (Stats. 1903, p. 338), requiring all fruit shipped or offered for shipment to be labeled with the county and locality where the same was grown, and making it a crime to violate the act, was held void as being an unconstitutional invasion of liberty and not a proper exercise of the police power. In that case, however, this court after deciding that such a provision in the act in question did not come within the purview of a police regulation, proceeded to state that, if the question before the Legislature at the time of the passage of the act had been that of preventing and prohibiting the false labeling of fruit products, the most direct and efficacious way to accomplish that result would have been for the Legislature to embrace within the act a provision prohibiting the false labeling of marketed fruit products, but that this the Legislature had not done; but, on the contrary, had so framed the act in question as to obtain for fruit raisers of some well-advertised and favored localities an advantage in the disposition of their own fruit, which under the authority and for the reasons well and elaborately set forth in People v. Hawkins, 157 N.Y. 1, 51 N.E. 257, 42 L. R. A. 490, 68 Am. St. Rep. 736, formed no part of the police power and was wholly beyond the prerogative of the Legislature. The statute here in question, however, in making provision in section 10 thereof against the false labeling of fruit, does precisely what this court indicated in Ex parte Hayden, supra, would have sufficed to render the act in question there a valid law. The petitioners also place their reliance upon the decision in the case of Mattei v. Hecke, 99 Cal.App. 747, 279 P. 470, wherein the provision of section 22 of the California Fruit, Nut, and Vegetable Standardization Act of 1927 (page 1858), which provided that grapes in containers other than those established by the act should have conspicuously marked upon such containers in letters not less than one-half inch in height ‘Irregular Container,’ came under review, and in which case, with special reference to that particular section of said act, it was held that the foregoing provision in the act was not calculated to prevent deception as to the content of such containers, and that it did not sufficiently appear in what manner it would operate in the preservation of public health, safety, morals, or welfare. It is difficult to perceive, however, wherein the language of that decision can be given application to the provisions of section 10 of said act as later amended, which have for their express purpose that of preventing deception in the marketing of fruit by forbidding the mislabeling of it or its container. On the other hand, this court in the case of In re Fujii, 189 Cal. 55, 207 P. 537, 539, having under consideration the provisions of the California Fruit, Nut, and Vegetable Standardization Act of 1921 (Stats. 1921, c. 719, p. 1234), relating to the use of standard containers for the packing and shipment of strawberries, had occasion to discuss the precise question as no the prevention of deceptive methods in the packing and shipment of fruit, and, in upholding the validity of said act providing for the standardization of containers of that variety of fruit products, said: ‘With the policy of the law we have not to deal, but it may be said that acts of this character, having for their purpose the protection of the purchasing public by the elimination of deceptive methods in the marketing of products, are beneficial in a high degree, and that such acts are to be liberally construed so as to give effect to their salutary regulations.’
We therefore conclude that the Fruit Standardization Act is not as to section 10 thereof unconstitutional, and that, assuming the act to be otherwise valid, the defendants and petitioners herein were properly convicted thereunder.
The next contention of the petitioners is that they have been illegally convicted and held upon the second complaint against them, charging a violation of the provisions of section 20 of the California Fruit, Nut, and Vegetable Standardization Act of 1927 as amended in 1929, in the manner above stated, and that said act is as to said section thereof as so amended unconstitutional and void. Section 20 of said Fruit Standardization Act of 1927 as it read prior to its amendment in 1929 provided for certain standards of excellence to which at maturity citrus fruits when being packed or delivered for shipment or being transported, offered for sale, or sold must conform. With special reference to grapefruit, section 20 of the act provided that ‘grapefruit shall not be deemed mature under the provisions of this act unless the juice contains soluble solids equal to or in excess of five parts to every part of acid contained in the juice.’ In 1929 said section was so amended as to provide with reference to grapefruit and the required content thereof at maturity that:
‘For the purpose of this section of this act the state shall be divided into districts as follows:
‘District 1. That part of the state south of the San Gorgonio pass in Riverside county and east of the Sierra Nevada range, comprising parts of the counties of Riverside and San Diego and all of Imperial county.
‘District 2. All of the state excepting the part included in District 1.’ With reference to grapefruit said section as amended provided that ‘grapefruit shall not be deemed mature under the provisions of this act unless the juice contains soluble solids equal to or in excess of six parts to every part of acid contained in the juices; * * * provided, further, that grapefruit produced in district two shall be deemed mature under the provisions of this act if the juice contains soluble solids equal to or in excess of five and one-half parts to every part of acid contained in the juice * * *; provided, however, that grapefruit remaining on the trees after June 1 of each season shall be deemed mature irrespective of analysis of the juice.’
The charge against the defendants in said second complaint, upon which they were convicted, was that they did willfully and unlawfully pack and cause to be packed, sold, offered for sale, or transported, grapefruit, the juice of which did not at the time the same was sold and offered for sale contain soluble solids equal to or in excess of five and one-half parts to every part of acid contained in said juice. Upon the trial of the defendants in the municipal court upon this charge, the record sufficiently discloses that the evidence of certain experts was offered and admitted which tended to prove that the defendants had packed, sold, and offered for sale to certain retail customers grapefruit, the juice of which showed a ratio of content of soluble solids in proportion to the acid contained therein amounting to less than five and one-half parts to every part of acid so contained. The petitioners, while admitting that such expert testimony was presented at the trial, have not undertaken to produce in connection with or as a part of their petition herein the detail of such evidence, and, this being so, we must assume for the purposes of this proceeding that such evidence so produced was sufficient to support the charge made against them in the foregoing regard and the judgment of conviction based thereon. Assuming the Fruit Standardization Act of 1927, as it originally read and as it was made to read by the amendment made to said section thereof in 1929, to be valid, it would seem to follow that the defendants are not concerned with the question as to whether they were convicted under the provisions of section 20 of the act as it originally read, or under the provisions of the section as amended in 1929, since in either event their conviction would seem to have been based upon the charge and upon evidence supporting the same that they had packed and offered for sale grapefruit, the juice of which at the time thereof showed a ratio between the soluble content and the acid part thereof amounting to less than the prescribed ratio contained in said section of the act as it originally read and as it was later amended to read; and this regardless of the district of the state wherein such grapefruit had been produced. The defendants, however, argue that since section 20 of the act was so amended in 1929 as to provide for the designation of two districts separated by the boundary lines of the San Gorgonio Pass, wherein under the terms of the amendment a different basis of required ratio in the juice content of matured grapefruit was provided for, with the effect that grapefruit grown in district 2 was required at maturity to show a lower ration of soluble solids in proportion to each part of acid than was provided for in the case of matured grapefruit grown in district 1 as therein designated, and, since there appears upon the face of said act to exist no rational basis for such differentiation, the amendment to section 20 of the act made by the Legislature in 1929 and under the terms of which the defendants were convicted was invalid, and that the invalidity of the same rendered the act in its entirety unconstitutional and void.
If it had been made to appear to us upon the face of the record herein that there was in truth and fact no rational basis for the division of the state into said districts for the purpose of regulating the packing and sale of grapefruit grown therein, and if it had further been made to appear to us that the defendants had been convicted of the sale of grapefruit with such a ratio of content in the juice thereof as would have rendered the sale of such grapefruit as matured legal and proper in the one district though not in the other, there might have been some basis for the defendants’ contention that section 20 of the act containing the districting of the state for the aforesaid purposes was illegal as lacking in a rational basis and that the constitutionality of the entire act was affected by the invalidity of section 20 thereof as thus amended. The difficulty with this contention is that it is lacking in a logical or legal foundation upon either ground, since as to the power of the state Legislature to so district the state, if there existed in the nature of things a rational basis therefor, there can be no question. It is a matter of common knowledge that the region of Southern California lying to the southward of San Gorgonio Pass, and forming under the provisions of the act as amended district 1 thereof, differs materially in such physical characteristics as those of soil and of climatic and atmospheric conditions affecting the growth and maturing of fruit products from that portion of the state which lies to the northward of San Gorgonio Pass and which is embraced in district 2 of the state as defined by said amended section of the act. There is nothing before us to show that the state Legislature in the formation of said districts, as provided in the amendment to the act, and in prescribing a different basis and ratio in the juice content of matured and therefore marketable grapefruit when grown in the one as compared with that required of such grapefruit when grown in the other of said districts, did not consider and base its action in the adoption of the amendment upon the foregoing facts, and upon the very expert evidence bearing thereon educed upon the trial of this cause. It might well be that the marked differences between the soil and climatic and atmospheric conditions existing in each of said districts would have a material effect upon the required quality and content of the grapefruit grown in each. The fact is, as the record discloses, that, upon the trial of the defendants upon the charge contained in said second complaint, there was introduced in evidence the test and testimony of a number of experts tending to establish the fact that as to the grapefruit grown in each of said districts, a precise basis existed for the very differentiation in the content of grapefruit at maturity when grown in the one as compared with that existing in the grapefruit grown in the other of said districts. The petitioners have not seen fit to produce the aforesaid evidence admittedly presented upon the trial of said charge, and we are therefore entirely unable to say that such evidence was not amply sufficient to establish the very basis of differentiation which the defendants contend to be unreasonable and to form no proper basis for the provisions embraced within the aforesaid amendment to said act. It would seem to be fairly obvious that, if the purpose and effect of said amendment was that of the protection of the purchasers and consumers of grapefruit against the sale of such grapefruit having one ratio of content and by virtue thereof having a particular value under the pretense that it was grapefruit having another and larger ratio of content between soluble solids and acids, and being by reason thereof of greater value, such purpose and effect would come within the purview of a police regulation affecting public health and welfare, and would hence be within the province of the Legislature to pass and of the courts to uphold and enforce. Such seems to have been the conclusion arrived at by the trial court and by the appellate tribunal of the superior court upon appeal, and with that conclusion we are disposed to agree.
The petitioners devote considerable space in both their petition and in the briefs and arguments of counsel in support thereof to certain alleged defects in other sections of the Fruit Standardization Act, with the violation of which the petitioners were not charged, and with the effect thereof upon the constitutionality of said act we are not for that reason and in this proceeding concerned, and for the further reason that said act contains a provision in section 39 thereof (St. 1927, p. 1881) to the effect that, ‘if any section, subsection, sentence, clause or phrase of this act is for any reason held to be unconstitutional, such decision shall not affect the validity of the remaining portions of this act.’
The petitioners finally urge that said act of 1927, under which it is claimed they were being prosecuted, was repealed by the amendments thereto in 1929. There is no merit in this contention. Whatever changes were made in the body of the act and in the several sections thereof here under consideration by the amendments thereto adopted in 1929 were not intended, either expressly or by any reasonable implication, to operate as a repeal of the act as thus amended. The prosecution of the defendants, as appears upon the face of each of the complaints presented against them, charged them with a violation of said act which would have sufficed as a basis for their conviction either under the original or amended form of the act.
It follows from the foregoing reasoning and conclusions that the defendants were properly convicted for the violation of the specific sections of said act with which they were charged, and hence that their applications herein and each of them should be denied and the writ issued herein discharged, and that each of the defendants should be and is hereby remanded to the custody of the officers of the law by whom each of them was being held and detained at the time of the issuance of said writ. It is so ordered.
We concur: WASTE, C. J.; SHENK, J.; CURTIS, J.; LANGDON, J.; SEAWELL, J.