San Francisco Gas Co. v. City of San Francisco

Citations

• 9 Cal. 453

Syllabus

<p>An answer is fatally defective if it does not deny-any of the material allegations of a verified complaint, either positively or according to information and belief; the only forms in which the allegations of a verified complaint can be controverted so as to raise an issue. A denial in any other form is unknown to our system of practice, and cannot have any legal effect.</p> <p>The answer that the defendant, a municipal corporation, has “ no knowledge or information” in respect to the allegations of a count in a verified complaint, “ and therefore denies the same,” is insufficient.</p> <p>The statute imposes upon the defendant, if a natural person, and if a corporation, upon its officers and agents, the duty of acquiring the requisite knowledge or information respecting the matters alleged in a verified complaint, to enable them to answer in the proper form.</p> <p>The rule which requires a defendant to answer positively as to the facts alleged in a verified complaint, which are presumptively within his own knowledge, applies to municipal corporations. The statute makes no distinction between the rules of pleading applicable to natural persons and those applicable to artificial persons.</p> <p>Per Field, J—A municipal corporation, outside of its governmental capacity, is in many respects to be regarded the same as a private corporation, and its officers and agents through whom it acts, must be presumed to know the contracts it enters into, the purchases it makes, and the property it uses. The knowledge of such matters must rest with some of its officers, and the corporation can not shelter itself under an assertion of ignorance.</p> <p>Under some circumstances a municipal corporation may become liable by implication. The obligation to do justice rests equally upon it as upon an individual. It can not avail itself of the property or labor of a party, and screen itself from responsibility under the plea that it never passed an ordinance on the subject. As against i