Plaintiff socialist labor party members filed an action against defendant cities to restrain and enjoin them from requiring the party members to secure a business license to distribute and sell their party newspaper. The Superior Court of Orange County (California) entered a judgment in favor of the cities and denied the party members' request for injunctive relief. The party members appealed.

The party members contended that the cities' business license ordinances applied only to commercial, profit-making businesses, and did not govern the activities of their nonprofit political newspaper. The cities argued that the ordinances were valid, nondiscriminatory measures to raise revenue. In reversing the judgment entered in favor of the cities, the court held that the party members' newspaper was a noncommercial, nonprofit, purely political publication, and that the party members were exempt from the payment of the business license fees. Los Angeles employment lawyers and business lawyers know all about business laws of California.

The court observed that any person was exempt from taxation upon any act of distributing information or opinion of any kind, whether political, scientific, or religious in character, when done solely in an effort to spread knowledge and ideas, with no thought of commercial gain. The court found that the primary function of the newspaper was to present the views of the Socialist Party to the paper's subscribers and not to realize a pecuniary profit.

The judgment that was entered in favor of the cities and against the party members was reversed. The court instructed the trial court to issue a permanent injunction restraining the cities and their agents and representatives from requiring the party members to secure and pay for a city business license as a condition for the distribution and sale of the party members' newspaper.

Respondent city filed an action against appellant telephone company to recover the value of street occupancy. The telephone company moved for a change of venue under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 394 to either Alpine or Mono County where it claimed it did not do business. The telephone company appealed a minute order from the Superior Court of Los Angeles County (California), which denied its motion to change venue.

The telephone company did business in the county of Los Angeles as well as in other counties of the state. The telephone company argued that because it was doing business in more than one county, and § 394 was silent concerning the telephone company also doing business in the county in which it was sued, it was entitled to a literal interpretation of the section to invoke a mandatory application requiring a change of venue. 

The city contended that under § 394 a corporate defendant doing business in a county other than that in which the action was brought by a municipality situated therein was not entitled to the benefit of the change of venue provided it was also doing business in the county in which the action was brought. The order was affirmed. The court found that the legislature did not intend that a corporate defendant doing business in a county in which it was sued by a municipality located therein should have the benefit of the change of venue provided in § 394. The court concluded that the venue provisions could not be invoked by the telephone company because it was doing business in the county in which an action was brought, and by the city situated therein.

Accordingly, the order, which denied the telephone company's motion to change venue, was affirmed.