Santa Rosa Lighting Co. v. Woodward

Citations

• 119 Cal. 30
• 50 P. 1025
• 1897 Cal. LEXIS 839

Syllabus

<p>Municipal Corporations—Lighting Streets—Letting Contract—Demand on City Council.—The city council or boards of trustees of municipalities are charged with notice of the act of March 26, 1895, requiring the letting of contracts for lighting public streets, and it is not necessary for a party seeking to compel them to comply with the requirements of that act to embody in his formal demand all its provisions or to specifically point out the steps demanded to be taken. It is sufficient, so far as the demand is concerned, to make it upon the council.</p> <p>Id.—Discretion as to Lighting Streets—Mandamus to Compel Advertisement for Bids.—The courts will not compel a city council to exercise its discretion as to whether the streets of its municipality should or should not be lighted; hut where its past and present official conduct unmistakably show that it has determined that the city should he lighted by electricity, and there is no valid binding contract standing in the way of proceeding under the act of 1895, a writ of mandate will lie at the instance of a taxpayer to compel it to advertise for bids for such lighting, as required by that act, without any showing by him of actual pecuniary damage. It will be presumed that the disregard by the council of the requirements of the statute is injurious.</p>