Wallace v. State Personnel Board

PIERCE, J. Appellants (respondents in the trial court) appeal from a writ of mandate requiring the State Personnel Board to determine the amount of salary to which respondent (petitioner in the trial court) is entitled for the period from October 16, 1957, to December 18, 1959. We will refer to the parties hereinafter by their designations in the trial court, for the reason that we are adopting, for the most part, the opinion of the trial judge.

Respondent is a senior electrical engineer with the State Division of Architecture, a civil service position. Both this litigation and an earlier proceeding in mandamus stem from a request by petitioner for three months’ sick leave in 1955, which request had been disallowed and his absence treated as an automatic resignation from state service under Government Code, section 19503. An appeal to the State Personnel Board, and from the adverse ruling there via the mandamus route through the superior court to this court resulted in a previous holding here that a civil servant could be ill (and thus entitled to sick leave under Cal. Admin. Code, tit. 2, § 401) due to mental and emotional causes as well as physical (the mental illness in this case being attended by, if not due to, the transfer of the place of employment from Sacramento to Los Angeles). The case was remanded for further proceedings. Chronology of facts through 1958 can be read in the opinion in Wallace v. State Personnel Board, 168 Cal.App.2d 543 [336 P.2d 223].

On December 18, 1959, respondent Personnel Board granted petitioner’s sick-leave request, reinstated him, and ordered payment of salary for the period of sick leave in 1955 and for the period from December 19, 1959, to the date of reinstatement and return to work, April 1, 1960. After a further hearing the board determined that petitioner was not entitled to payment of any salary for the period from October [76116], 1957, to December 19, 1959, based upon a finding that representatives of the Division of Architecture had “offered to permit” respondent Wallace to resume his duties on October 16, 1957 “provided he serve a 6-month probationary period.” Wallace had refused. It was stated in the finding that this would not have prejudiced his right to reinstatement as a permanent employee (upon the ultimate disposition of his then pending appeal favorable to him) and that he would have received the same salary.

The validity of this finding was the sole issue in a petition for writ of mandate by petitioner to the superior court and is the sole issue here. The trial court decreed the finding erroneous.