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DOWDALL LAW OFFICES <br />A PROFESSIONAL CORPORATION <br />ATTO R N EYS AT LAW <br />City Council of the City of Santa Ana <br />City of Santa Ana <br />September 16, 2021 <br />Page 27 <br />service to consumers generally.' (Historical Note, 65B West's Ann. Cal. Veh. Code (1987 ed.) § <br />3000, p. 263.)" Togas v. American Honda Motor Co. (1997) 57 Ca1.App.4th 506. <br />In American Motors Sales Corp. v. NMVB, the court held that the mandatory <br />requirement that dealer members sit on the Board in dealer -manufacturer controversies and lack <br />of any counterbalancing requirement that manufacturer members sit on the Board, deprived the <br />manufacturer -litigants of due process in the adjudication of "good cause" disputes. Id., at 992. <br />The court held that because dealer members inevitably have an economic stake in the <br />outcome, such a "dealer -stacked" Board failed to comport with the constitutional requirement of <br />a fair and impartial tribunal. Id., at pp. 987-99L) The American Motors court expressed the <br />background issue this way: <br />The result is that although under the 1973 legislation the adversaries before the Board <br />invariably derive from two distinct groups, dealers and manufacturers, the Board which resolves <br />their disputes must include four members from the dealer group but need not include any <br />members from the manufacturer group. Does an administrative tribunal so constituted meet the <br />requirements of due process? Is it such "a competent and impartial tribunal in administrative <br />hearings" (Peters v. Kiff (1972) 407 U.S. 493 [33 L.Ed.2d 83, 92 S. Ct. 2163]) as to comport <br />with due process? <br />"We agree with the trial judge's negative answer to these questions." American Motors <br />Sales Corp. v. NMVB (1977) 69 Cal.App.3d 983, 987 [138 Cal.Rptr. 594]. In the same manner, <br />the landlords and tenants in Santa Ana, subject to adjudicating rent increases within their <br />mobilehome parks, are invariably hostile, acrimonious and adversarial. The financial interest of <br />the dealers (of which there were 4 rather of 9 total members) was not always consistent, a point <br />very important to the Court. <br />[The board] was given the added power to intrude upon the contractual rights and <br />obligations of dealers and their product suppliers, entities whose respective economic interests <br />are in no way identical, or coextensive, frequently not even harmonious. No longer did members <br />of a trade or occupation (dealer -Board -members) regulate only their own kind; they began to <br />regulate the economic and contractual relations of others with their own kind. American Motors <br />Sales Corp. v. NMVB (1977) 69 Cal.App.3d 983, 991. <br />As in American Motor Sales, the tenant commissioners contemplated by the Santa Ana <br />rent control law are not regulating their own kind, they are regulating "... the economic and <br />contractual relations of others with their own kind" (id.), i.e., the park owners with whom their <br />co -commissioner Smith was in an adversarial position. <br />The legislature, quite incredibly in a democratic republic, called for requirement that the <br />nine -man Board consist of at least four car dealers. In effect it took sides in all <br />Board -adjudicated controversies between dealers and manufacturers, making certain that the <br />dealer interests would at all times be substantially represented and favored. Of course, the court <br />-27- <br />