HIGH COURT RESTRICTS PLACING OF BILLBOARDS

The state Supreme Court, restricting the placement of billboards along California highways, ruled Thursday that outdoor advertising signs may only be placed on land zoned primarily for commercial or industrial use.

The unanimous decision was a major victory for state transportation officials, who had warned that allowing billboards on mainly residential or agricultural lands could lead to a proliferation of such signs, particularly in sparsely populated areas.

The justices overturned an appeal court ruling permitting the installation of five illuminated, double-sided billboards in the Mojave Desert community of Baker, just off Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

‘Desert Living’ Zone The fact that local authorities had given special approval for some commercial activities in an area zoned for “desert living” was not sufficient to allow the billboards, the high court said.

“A remote junction harboring a dusty service station, a small cafe and a defunct mine would not generally justify a commercial zone and does not constitute the conglomeration of true business enterprises in which the Legislature intended to allow the placement of billboards,” Justice Stanley Mosk wrote for the court.

“It is outposts of this sort, conjuring images of the grizzled prospector or the eccentric hermit, that draw many travelers to the nearly barren desert, and it is here that illuminated billboards would be most incongruous.”

‘Most Important’ Melvin R. Dykman, an attorney for the state Department of Transportation, called the ruling “most important,” saying it would provide strong aesthetic protection to highway landscapes throughout California.

“If the ruling had gone the other way, they (advertisers) could have put up as many signs as they wanted,” he said. “They could have gone into residential areas adjacent to a highway if a local governmental body allowed it and we would have had no control. Signs would have proliferated.”

Stan E. Lancaster, chief of the department’s outdoor advertising section, said that an adverse ruling also might have jeopardized federal funds the state receives under the Highway Beautification Act of 1965.

Some to Be Dismantled Lancaster said it appeared that 11 double-sided billboards in the state would have to be dismantled under the court’s ruling.

Hugh R. Coffin of Santa Ana, attorney for an outdoor advertising firm that had erected the desert billboards, said he was “upset” by the ruling. He said he may ask the justices to reconsider the decision, or he may seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Coffin denied the state’s contentions that approving billboards in such locations could lead to a spread of outdoor advertising, noting that state law also requires that highway billboards must be within 1,000 feet of existing commercial activity.

“Billboards would have gone up in relatively few areas,” he said. “You wouldn’t find outdoor advertising structures in the undeveloped desert.”

The case arose when United Outdoor Advertising Co. sought to place billboards in Baker, an unincorporated community of about 600 people in San Bernardino County.

The company first obtained approval from county officials to place the billboards in an area where commercial activity was only conditionally permitted. But state authorities refused to allow the signs on grounds that the land was not zoned primarily for commercial or industrial use.

A San Bernardino Superior Court ordered the state to issue a permit for the billboards, and a state Court of Appeal upheld the order. State officials appealed to the state Supreme Court, saying that under the lower-court rulings, a sign company theoretically could establish a “business” in a trailer in the middle of the desert and then put up as many as ten billboards within 1,000 feet of the trailer.

In their ruling Thursday, the justices rejected the advertising company’s contention that billboards should be permitted because the land was within one of several locations labeled “special service” areas under the county’s General Plan. That designation allowed businesses to offer services to highway travelers and local residents.

The justices said, however, that such a designation lacked the precise authorization for commercial activity that zoning laws would provide and thus could not be invoked to justify billboards.