City and County of San Francisco v. Superior Court

Opinion

TOBRINER, J.

Petitioners, the City and County of San Francisco and individual members of the city’s board of supervisors, seek a writ of prohibition to restrain the superior court from enforcing an order

[935]

requiring the individual supervisors to attend depositions scheduled in connection with a pending taxpayer action. As explained below, we have determined that the requested writ should be denied.

This discovery matter arises in connection with one of the two taxpayer actions underlying the mandate action of

City and County of San Francisco

v.

Cooper, ante,

page 898 [120 Cal.Rptr. 707, 534 P.2d 403]. The entire background of the litigation is discussed in full in the

Cooper

decision.

After filing the taxpayer action challenging the validity of the city salary standardization ordinance, George Bangs sought to depose each of the individual supervisors who had participated in the board action adopting the ordinance. When the individual supervisors refused to appear at noticed depositions, Bangs sought and obtained a superior court order directing the individual members of the board to be present at depositions noticed by Bangs and to answer all relevant questions propounded by him. The superior court order, however, specifically preserved each deponent’s right to object to any individual questions that might be posed.

1

It is the enforcement of this initial order which petitioners now seek to restrain.

In the recent case of

County of Los Angeles

v.

Superior Court (Burroughs)

(1975)