Platnauer v. Board of Supervisors

FINCH, P. J.

Plaintiff was granted a peremptory writ of mandate directing the defendants to appoint a justice of the peace for the city of Sacramento. The defendants have appealed.

Plaintiff alleged that he is a taxpayer and a qualified elector of the city of Sacramento; that for more than twenty

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years he has been admitted to -practice law in the state of California; that he presented and filed a petition, signed by taxpayers and electors of the city of Sacramento, requesting defendants to appoint him justice of the peace of said city, and that plaintiff demanded of defendants that they appoint some competent person justice of the peace of said city, but that they refused and still refuse to appoint any person to such office. From the pleadings and the stipulations of the parties it appears that one of the judicial townships into which the county of Sacramento is divided is designated Sacramento township and is identical in boundaries with the city of Sacramento ; that a justice of the peace for said judicial township was elected at the last general election and is now acting as such; that for a number of years there has been no incumbent of the office of city justice of the peace of the city of Sacramento, and that said city is a city of the second and one-half class.

Section 4015 of the Political Code provides: “The board of supervisors of each county, as public convenience may require, shall divide their respective counties into townships for the purpose of electing justices of the peace and constables ; provided, however, that in the establishment of townships that may hereafter be established no incorporated city shall be divided so as to lie partly within one township and partly within another.” The county of Sacramento is a county of the seventh class and the city of Sacramento has a population of more than twenty thousand. Section 4236-1 of the Political Code, as added by Stats. 1921, p. 794, provides: “For the purpose of regulating the compensation of township justices and constables in counties of the seventh elas£, townships shall be classified on°the basis of population. . . . Incorporated cities having a population of twenty thousand or more, shall be known as townships of the first class. . . . Townships of the first class shall have one justice,” whose salary is fixed at “three thousand six hundred dollars per .annum.” Section 103 of the Code of Civil Procedure, as amended by the legislature of 1923 (Stats. 1923, p. 1011), provides: “There shall be at least one justice’s court in each of the townships of the state, for which one justice of the peace must be elected. ... In every city of the first and one-half class there must be seven justices of the peace, and in every city of the second class