Independence League v. Taylor

BEATTY, C. J.

Application for mandate in supreme court to Edward R. Taylor, as mayor of the city and county of San Francisco, et al.

The object of this proceeding by

mandamus

is -to compel the mayor of the city and county of San Francisco to appoint as members of the board of election commissioners of said city and county two persons selected from said Independence League. The other persons, King and Apperson, who are named as respondents, are members of other political parties who were appointed to fill vacancies in the board of election commissioners at a time when, by reason of their party affiliations, they were ineligible as contended by petitioners, and when members of the Independence League were alone eligible. They are now in the possession of the offices to which they were so appointed, and are at least

de facto,

if not

de jure,

members of the commission. They seem to have been named as parties defendant upon the view that the court could, in this proceeding, turn them out and put others in their places, but we are satisfied that we cannot now grant that measure of relief on any view as to the statutory duty of the mayor with regard to the selection of his appointees. If it shall be concluded that it was the imperative duty of the mayor to appoint members of the Independence League, and none others, to the vacancies in the commission, and that the performance of that duty can and ought now to be enforced by a peremptory writ of mandate, the only effect will be that any new appointees of the mayor will be invested with a claim of title to the offices in question which will enable them to contest the right of King and Apperson to continue in possession. This, of course, gives them a contingent and indirect interest in the result of this

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proceeding, but it does not entitle them to be treated as parties properly before the court. Upon this view of the case, we are relieved of any further consideration of the point to which most of the argument of counsel was addressed,- — viz., the point urged in behalf of King and Apperson that