# General Dynamics Corp. v. County of Los Angeles

> California Supreme Court · October 24, 1958 · 51 Cal. 2d 59

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9533344

## Case

- **Full name:** GENERAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION (A Corporation), Plaintiff and Respondent, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES Et Al, Appellants; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Intervener and Respondent; AEROJET-GENERAL CORPORATION (A Corporation), Plaintiff and Respondent, v. COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES Et Al., Appellants; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Intervener and Respondent
- **Court:** California Supreme Court
- **Decided:** October 24, 1958
- **Citations:** 51 Cal. 2d 59; 330 P.2d 794; 1958 Cal. LEXIS 207
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by McCOMB
- **Judges:** Traynor, McComb
- **Cited by:** 35 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9533344

## Opinion text

McCOMB, J.
I concur in the affirmance of the judgments for the reasons expressed by Mr. Justice Traynor in the majority opinion and also for the reason that the property here involved upon which defendants had attempted to levy and collect taxes was not the property of plaintiffs.
Article XIII of the state Constitution authorizes the taxation of “property.” The term “property” in the broadest meaning is ownership; the unrestricted and exclusive right to a thing; the right to dispose of a thing in every legal way, to possess it, to use it, and to exclude every one else from interfering with it. (Black, Law Dictionary (4th ed. 1951), p. 1382.)
In Douglas Aircraft Co. v. Byram, 57 Cal.App.2d 311, 317 [ 134 P.2d 15 ], Mr. Justice Bishop says, “A common characteristic of a property right, is that it may be disposed of, transferred to another.”
In Yuba River Power Co. v. Nevada Irr. Dist., 207 Cal. 521, 524 [ 279 P. 128 ], the definition of property is given as “the *72 exclusive right of possession, enjoying, and disposing of a thing; it is ‘the right and interest which a man has in lands and chattels, to the exclusion of others’; and the term is sufficiently comprehensive to include every species of estate, real or personal.”
In view of the foregoing definitions, the property involved in the instant cases was not property of plaintiffs since it did not have the attributes as defined above.
Plaintiffs could not use any part of the property without the consent of the government. Neither did plaintiffs have the ownership, that is, the unrestricted right to possess it, to use it, or to exclude everyone else from interfering with it. Plaintiffs did not have the power to dispose of it, to transfer it, to pledge or to hypothecate it. The property, so far as plaintiffs were concerned, had no exchangeable value and did not go to make up part of plaintiffs’ estate. Therefore, since the property in question was not the property of plaintiffs, it was not properly taxable by defendants.
Schauer, J., concurred.
Appellants’ petition for a rehearing was denied November 19, 1958.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9533344. Public record. Not legal advice.