## Facts

- Charles L. Clemons bought a nine-unit bungalow court in Los Angeles, built about 20 years earlier and continuously used for residential purposes.
- The property was in Zone C-2 and subject to a municipal zoning ordinance requiring residential lots not be reduced below a minimum average width of 50 feet and minimum area of 5,000 square feet.
- Clemons subdivided the property into nine parcels averaging about 925 square feet each, with one bungalow on each parcel.
- He conveyed eight parcels by sale or 99-year lease and granted easements for access to Beverly Boulevard over the court’s walkways; two parcels lacked street or alley frontage.
- The court shared limited facilities (one incinerator and two sewer connections).
- The City threatened criminal enforcement for violating the ordinance, prompting Clemons to sue for declaratory and injunctive relief, alleging the ordinance exceeded police power and violated due process.

## Issues

1. Whether a zoning ordinance imposing minimum residential lot area and width is a valid exercise of municipal police power or an arbitrary deprivation of property without due process.
2. Whether subdivisions and conveyances creating lots below the prescribed minimums may be declared null and void and subjected to enforcement.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for the City.
- The ordinance was constitutional, valid, and enforceable as a police-power zoning measure.
- Clemons’s subdivision and resulting conveyances of substandard parcels were properly declared null and void.

## Legal Principles

- Zoning regulations are valid if they bear a substantial relation to public health, safety, comfort, or general welfare and are not clearly arbitrary or unreasonable.
- Minimum lot area and width requirements may be used to control density and to reduce risks tied to overcrowding and inadequate access and sanitation.
- A regulation does not violate due process merely because it limits subdivision and reduces marketability, so long as the property retains reasonable use (e.g., continued use as a single residential parcel).
- When an ordinance validly prohibits the creation of substandard lots, attempted lot divisions and transfers made in violation of that prohibition may be adjudged invalid, and the municipality may pursue civil and criminal enforcement.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Los Angeles’s minimum lot-size and width ordinance as a reasonable zoning measure related to public welfare and sustained the invalidation of conveyances that attempted to create legally separate residential parcels below the minimum standards.


Clemons v. City of Los Angeles, 36 Cal. 2d 95, 222 P.2d 439 (Cal. 1950)