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City of Bellingham v. Schampera10/20/1960
or vehicle operator's license as a penalty for a violation of a municipal ordinance; nor does the superior court have any authority to impose such a penalty on an
appeal from a police court conviction for the violation of an ordinance. Though the appeal results in a trial de novo, the charge is still the violation of a municipal ordinance, and the superior court's authority is specifically limited on such an appeal by RCW 35.22.560 to a fine of not to exceed three hundred dollars, and imprisonment in the city jail for not to exceed ninety days, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
We turn now to a consideration of the cases relied upon by the respondent.
In Kistler v. City of Warren (1937), 58 Ohio App. 531, 16 N. E. (2d) 948, we have an express holding that the court could not suspend a motor vehicle operator's license for the violation of an ordinance, but that it could impose the penalty which the ordinance in that case evidently provided, i.e., to suspend the convicted person "from the right to operate a motor vehicle within the city of Warren" for not more than one year.
We are not here concerned with an attempt to suspend the right of the appellant to operate a motor vehicle within the limits of the city of Bellingham, but with an ordinance that provides for the suspension of an operator's license for not less than thirty days and a judgment and sentence that suspends it for six months. This would prevent the appellant from driving any where in the state of Washington for that period of time.
Cases are cited, on behalf of the city, from states where statutes make the conviction of certain offenses in a municipal court the basis for a mandatory revocation of a driver's license, as in Smith v. City of Gainesville (1957), 93 So. (2d) 105, where it was held that in revoking the driver's license (of a person convicted of driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor) a municipal judge merely followed the mandate of a statute as an administrative representative of the state department of public safety at the municipal level; and a statute imposing the duty of such revocation on a municipal judge imposes a purely ministerial or administrative responsibility, and, therefore, does not constitute an improper delegation of
judicial authority in determining a punishment to be imposed.
Comparable, perhaps, would be our own RCW 46.20.250 (Laws of 1959, chapter 239, § 1, p. 1118) which provides that:
"Mandatory revocation of license by court. Every court in fixing the penalty shall forthwith revoke the vehicle operator's license of a person upon his conviction of any of the following crimes, when such conviction has become final:
"1. . . .
"2. . . .
"3. . . .
"4. . . .
"5. . . .
"6. Conviction or forfeiture of bail upon three charges of operating a vehicle while under the influence of or affected by the use of intoxicating liquor or of any narcotic drug, all within the preceding five years;
"7. . . ."
This is a mandate to "every court" to revoke a license under certain conditions regardless of what penalty the statute or ordinance violated may have provided.
Such situations have no bearing on the problem now under consideration.
The city and the trial court have read too much into RCW 46.08.190, giving police court judges concurrent jurisdiction with the superior court for the violation of certain state statutes, i.e., "the provisions of this title."
We find neither statutory nor case authorit
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