strictness. A substantial departure from the method specifically pointed out by the statute for raising the money for the purposes of the district will render the assessment abortive. These are elementary propositions which apply in the construction of the powers, duties, and obligations of all public or quasi-public instrumentalities or agencies established for the purpose of carrying out, within certain limited subdivisions of the state, certain designated policies of the state or of exercising certain governmental functions. [4] The right of the owners of lands within reclamation districts to have the assessments levied against such lands for the purposes of such districts made collectible and payable in separate installments is, as above declared, a substantial one expressly given to them by the legislature for their benefit and convenience, and the courts would be guilty of resorting to the very extreme of judicial legislation under the guise of construction should they hold that the trustees of reclamation districts are at liberty to disregard that right whenever they see fit to do so, and so require the land owners to pay the entire assessments at one time.

We have carefully read and considered the briefs of respondent. We find no fault with the rules of statutory construction to which they therein refer and which they invoke as supporting their view of the section of the Political Code in question. But, as must be manifest from the views we have already expressed respecting the language of said section, we cannot support them in their insistence upon the application to the present case of the rules of construction invoked by them or the cases they rely upon. They argue that, as there is no language in the section expressly forbidding the trustees from calling in the entire. assessment at one time, therefore, the legislature must have intended that they should be vested with the discretion of collecting the entire assessment at any time, if, in their judgment, the requirements of the district justify it. This proposition we have already answered. While it is true. that the section does not say to the board, "You shall not call in the entire assessment at one time," it does say, as we have shown, that the collection and payment of the assessments shall be in separate installments, and this is tantamount to the declaration that the collection of the entire assessment shall not be compelled by the trustees at

one time. The language necessarily excludes any other manner of collecting the assessments.

Nor is there any force in the argument of respondent that, inasmuch as the land owners must pay the entire assessment at some time, they can suffer no prejudice because the suit to foreclose or to enforce payment of the assessment is upon or for the entire assessment. Prejudice to the party so wronged must always follow from an act resulting in the invasion of any substantial right to which he is entitled under the law. In contracts, neither party has the right to forfeit the agreement before the time for the doing of the thing thereby agreed to be done has matured. No action will lie to recover on a promissory note until the debt of which it is evidence is due. If a purchaser agrees to pay for personal property by installments payable at stated intervals of time, his rights under the agreement cannot be forfeited until he has violated the conditions of payment or some other vital covenant. The same principle applies here. The district was without authority to sue for the entire assessment until there was default in the land owner to pay one of the installments for a certain specified period; but the vital proposition involved is the land owner's right to have the assessment made payable in separate installments so that it will be the more convenient for him to pay the assessment. For aught that can be said to the contrary, the defendants here might have willingly paid the assessments had they been made payable according to law. We have no right to assume that they would not have done so if the amount had been ordered payable in installments. [5] But be that as it may, we are fully persuaded that, for the reasons above given, the complaint fails to state a cause of action against the defendants-that is to say, that the action was premature or brought before a cause therefor could have accrued-and that the demurrer thereto should, therefore, have been sustained. From this it follows, of course, that, the demurrer having been overruled and the cause tried, and the evidence at the trial showing that the trustees failed to order the assessment involved herein to be collected and paid in separate installments, the motion of defendants for a nonsuit should have been granted.

While the conclusion thus arrived at is decisive of the case, there are some other points to which attention should be given, in view of possible litigation arising in the future with respect to this assessment.

2. Appellants claim that the court erred in admitting in evidence the judgment-roll in the validation suit, over the objection of defendants, that (1) No notice of the pendency of said action was offered in evidence; (2) That the court had no jurisdiction to render a judgment validating said assessment against the then owner of said lands, Lovdal Brothers Company, a corporation; (3) Conceding the validating judgment to be binding upon these defendants, still the plaintiff waived the estoppel that would otherwise have been created by the judgment by introducing evidence in support of each allegation of the complaint necessary to establish the regularity and validity of the assessment.

[6] While section 3466 of the Political Code as it read at the time the assessment in question was levied provided that a lis pendens should be filed in the office of the county recorder in all actions for the collection or enforcement of the payment of delinquent installments of the assessment, there was no provision, in section 34931⁄2 of said code, authorizing actions to determine the validity of the assessments, which required that notice of the pendency of such actions should be filed. Nor was such a notice required to be filed in such actions by section 409 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which relates entirely to actions involving the title or the right of possession to real property. The validation action did not involve the title or the right of possession of real property, but merely the question of the validity of an assessment which, under section 3463 of the Political Code, as it then read, became a lien upon the property assessed from and after the filing with the county treasurer by the assessment commissioners of a list of the charges assessed against the land and prior to the time at which the validation suit could be brought. From these considerations it follows that it was not necessary to file a notice of the pendency of the action to establish the validity of the assessment.

[7] The objection that the court had no jurisdiction to adjudicate the validity of the assessment as against Lovdal Brothers Company, the then owner of the lands in

question, is based upon the contention that the summons required by the statute is not in the form of language prescribed thereby. This objection is highly technical and without substantial merit. Section 349311⁄2 provided that, in such an action, the summons shall require the defendant or defendants "to answer the complaint within ten days after the service of the summons, if served within the state." The summons served on Lovdal Brothers Company was in the usual form of such processes and required the defendant to "answer the complaint within ten days, exclusive of the day of service after service on you of this summons, if served within the said county-if served elsewhere within thirty days." Thus it will be observed that the summons served did not direct or require the defendant to answer the complaint within ten days, "if served within the state," and it is upon this omission that the objection to the summons is founded. By the summons the said defendant was informed that, if served within the county in which the action was brought, it was required to answer the complaint within ten days after such service. The certificate attached to the summons by the party making service on Lovdal Brothers Company sets forth that the summons was served on said company in Yolo County. Thus the said defendant was given, substantially as the statute required, notice of the commencement of the action, and thus the only purpose that a summons is designed to achieve was as effectually and fully accomplished as if the process had contained the precise language of section. 3493%. The rule of the code is that its provisions and all proceedings under it are to be liberally construed, with a view to effect its objects and to promote justice (Code Civ. Proc., sec. 4), and this rule obviously applies as well to the provisions as to a summons as to these relating to other proceedings and processes authorized by the codes. Bewick v. Muir, 83 Cal. 370, [23 Pac. 389].)

(See

In this connection we should notice another point made by appellants, which is that neither W. E. Lovdal, the grantee of the corporation of the lands involved herein, nor his executrices, ever received notice of the validation suit, and that the court below, therefore, never acquired jurisdiction to enter judgment in said action as against them. The contention is without force. The deceased,

Lovdal, purchased the property after judgment in the validation suit was rendered and entered, and, inasmuch as the effect of the judgment was to confirm or establish the validity of the lien which, ipso facto, attached to all the lands in the district upon the filing of the list of the charges with the county treasurer, the judgment imparted notice of such lien, and all purchasers of property in the district subject to the assessment were charged with such notice. (See Carpenter v. Lewis, 119 Cal. 18, 22, [50 Pac. 925].) [8] At any rate, the action in the validation suit was one in rem, and it was binding upon the lands assessed and, therefore, concluded all subsequent purchasers. (Peterson v. Weissbein, 80 Cal. 38, [22 Pac. 56]; Riverside Land Co. v. Jensen, 108 Cal. 146, [41 Pac. 40]; 39 Cyc. 1710.)

[9] The claim that the plaintiff waived the estoppel created by the judgment in the validation suit by introducing evidence here in support of the issues raised in that suit requires no elaborate notice here, since, if it were true that such an objection is good as against the right to invoke an estoppel by judgment, the same would probably be obviated at the trial of any action which might be brought in the future to enforce the payment of this assessment. It may be suggested, however, that the case of Megerle v. Ashe, 33 Cal. 74, cited by the respondent as supporting the objection referred to, has been expressly overruled, so far as that proposition is concerned, by Harding v. Harding, 148 Cal. 397, [83 Pac. 434], in which it is said: "But whatever construction may be put upon Megerle v. Ashe, 33 Cal. 74, and the later case of Hicks v. Lovell, 64 Cal. 14, 22, [49 Am. Rep. 679, 27 Pac. 942], where something is said that might be construed as an approval of the statement quoted from the former one, we are satisfied that, under our system, a defendant does not waive his rights under a judgment pleaded in bar, by the mere act of also contesting the claim of the plaintiff upon the merits."

[10] 3. The plans and estimates of P. N. Ashley, engineer of the district, dated July 6, 1908, as reported to the trustees of the district, stated that the estimated cost of raising old front levees which were to be used as a part of the reclamation plan was six cents per cubic yard. The trustees of the district at that time were Messrs. H. J. Goethe, Theo. Blauth, and C. F. Silva, each of whom was the