Mark v. Superior Court

VAN DYKE, J.

This is an application for a writ of prohibition to prevent the respondent court and the judge thereof from enforcing obedience to a decree and writ of injunction issued pursuant thereto.

From the petition and papers it appears that on July 18, 1899, one J. C. Green, as plaintiff, commenced an action in said superior court against the said board of education and the members thereof, to obtain an injunction.commanding and requiring said board of education and the members thereof to cause to be used in the public schools of the city and county of San Francisco the text-books of the "California system of vertical penmanship,” and to refrain from using and causing to be used text-books of the "Shaylor system of vertical round-hand penmanship”; that on the 18th of July, 1899, an order was issued by said court directed to the defendants in said action to show cause why an injunction should not issue restraining them from using or causing to be used in the public schools of said city and county the text-books of the Shaylor system of vertical round-hand penmanship. Hpon the return to the said order to show cause the court, after hearing the evidence adduced, on July 31, 1899, denied the plaintiff’s motion for a writ of injunction

pendente Ute,

and dismissed said order to show cause. At the opening of the school year in the month of August, 1899, the text-books of the Shaylor system of round-hand penmanship were introduced into the public schools of the city and county of San Francisco, and ever since have been used as a uniform system of text-books upon penmanship therein, and no text-books of the "California, system of vertical penmanship” have been used in the public schools of said city and county subsequent to the opening of the said public schools iti

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the month of August, 1899. On the twenty-eighth day of July, 1899, Edwin Ginn and others, partners doing business under the firm name of Ginn & Co., of Boston, Massachusetts, having first been by order of said superior court permitted to intervene in the said action, filed a complaint in intervention setting forth that the defendant board of education had, by resolution duly given, made, and entered, adopted the textbooks of the said Shaylor system of vertical round-hand penmanship for use in the public schools of the city and county of San Francisco, and that a contract had been made by and between them and the said board of education whereby they had bound themselves to furnish the text-hooks of the said Shaylor system for use in the said public schools, and praying that the defendant board- of education be required specifically to perform the said contract, and that the relief prayed by the plaintiff in said action be denied. On or about the eleventh day of September, 1899, H. S. Crocker Company, a corporation, having been by order of said superior court permitted to intervene, filed therein its complaint in intervention. Thereafter, issue having been joined upon the plaintiffs’ second' amended complaint in said action, by the answer of said board of education, and Ginn & Co.’s complaint in intervention and H. S. Crocker Company’s complaint in intervention, trial was had, and thereupon on the 19th of February, 1900, a judgment and decree was entered in said superior court, and thereupon an injunction was issued directed to the petitioners herein restraining them from using, or causing to be used, in the public schools of the city and county of San Francisco the text-books of the Shaylor system of vertical round-hand penmanship, and commanding them to cause to be used in said public schools the text-books of the California system of vertical penmanship as the text-books on penmanship therein. Thereafter, on or about the 19th of March, 1900, the said superior court, upon the application of the plaintiff in said action, J. C. Green, issued an order requiring the petitioners and R. H. Webster, superintendent of schools, to appear before said court on the 33d of March to show cause why they should not be punished for contempt of court for disobeying said injunction order; that on the 33d of March, 1900, the board of education and the intervenors Ginn