Citations
- 38 Cal. App. 4th 910
Full opinion text
Opinion
MERRILL, J.
American President Lines, Ltd. (APL), paid over $4.2 million in additional fees assessed by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), for registering its fleet of truck trailers during 1989-1991. This appeal and related writ petition question the DMV’s determination of those fees and place under scmtiny the procedures for challenging them. We conclude the DMV wrongly assessed additional fees for the years 1989 and 1990, which were covered by a special agreement between the DMV and APL and wrongly computed the fees for 1991, which was outside the special agreement. We affirm the judgment in most respects. We uphold APL’s entitlement to prejudgment interest, but we vacate the superior court’s determination that APL was entitled to attorney fees.
We also explain why APL was correct in following the administrative mandamus procedures which led to this appeal. We issue a writ of mandate to compel the superior court to terminate a parallel tax refund action instituted by APL at the DMV’s insistence.
I. Facts and Procedures
The central issue in this case is the meaning of an agreement entered into by APL and the DMV. To place the agreement in context, we first explain the International Registration Plan (IRP) and Permanent Interstate Trailer System (PITS) program, to which the agreement relates.
The IRP is a compact entered into by many states and at least one Canadian province to facilitate registration of interstate truck fleets. Under the IRP, a fleet owner selects a base jurisdiction in which to register the fleet. The base jurisdiction issues license plates, tags, and vehicle registrations, calculates the fees owed to each state and province, collects the fees, and disburses them. Fees are apportioned according to the miles traveled in each participating state and province as a percentage of total miles. Trucks registered under the IRP do not have to be separately registered in other participating states or pay trip permit fees for travel in other states, as would trucks registered in the traditional manner.
California is among a handful of states that require registration of both truck cabs (power units) and trailer chassis. California has made the terms and conditions of the IRP applicable to trailer registration and has instituted the PITS program for apportioned registration of fleets of 500 or more commercial interstate chassis.
In 1988, APL operated some 30,000 chassis, 5,000 of them registered in California. In order to reduce the complications involved in purchasing individual trip permits for its non-California chassis, APL entered into discussions with the DMV about joining the PITS program. These discussions uncovered several concerns: (1) APL tracked its chassis by days, not by mileage, because most chassis do not have odometers and errors often occur in driver-noted mileage; (2) it would be administratively difficult to register at once some 30,000 chassis; (3) double registration would be paid in the beginning on those already registered in California; (4) the percentages calculated for the chassis enrolled in the first year would form the basis for fees in the next year, skewing the percentages if the first year enrollees were not representative of the entire fleet.
To meet these problems, the DMV and APL entered into an agreement, the most significant features of which were a 20-month registration period and an agreement to use days in the state in place of miles for computing fees. The appeal and writ filed in this court present conflicting interpretations of this agreement.
The agreement was to take effect May 1, 1989, and to last until 90 days after notice of termination or notice of a desire to alter its terms. APL was to make its best effort to finalize enrollment by December 31,1990. The parties agreed that APL could “use a vehicle day calculation method (inventory) instead of the IRP’s standard method of mileage accumulation for reporting jurisdictional percentages.” The agreement imposed no specific timetable for submitting enrollment applications. Instead, the agreement stated: “APL will enroll owned and long-term leased chassis in the PITS program. Applications shall be made in quantities to be determined by APL.”
The parties agreed, in paragraph C3, that “Vehicle License Fees will be calculated by DMV using the Schedule of Fees for California and other IRP trailer states for the current year, plus indicia and registration fees. Once calculations have been completed for all chassis enrolled in PITS (hereinafter ‘Base Fleet Calculation’), fees due to the State of California and other IRP trailer states will be determined as follows: [U a) For chassis enrolled during the Enrollment Period: [