Christophel v. Riley

Petition for writ of mandate to compel the respondents as controller and treasurer, respectively, of the state of California, to credit petitioner, as treasurer of Sacramento County, with the amount of a certain warrant tendered by a land owner to, and accepted by, petitioner in part payment of Sutter-Butte By-Pass Assessment No. 6, levied upon land owners in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Drainage District.

The Sacramento and San Joaquin Drainage District is a state agency, legally created, and the management and control thereof is vested in the reclamation board of the state of California. On November 6, 1917, the board adopted and determined upon a project known and designated as “Sutter-Butte By-Pass Project Number Six.”

A bond issue, with the proceeds of which the reclamation board proposed to defray the expenses of the project for which the assessment had been levied, proving unsuccessful, the legislature authorized the board, in its discretion, to order the cancellation of the issue, and to call for the payment of the assessment whenever it appeared that the bonds had not been sold within a year from their issuance. (Stats. 1919, chap. 520, sec. 54, p. 1111.) In 1927, the legislature passed an emergency measure known as the “Sacramento and San Joaquin drainage district refunding act,” in which, among other provisions, it was made the duty of the reclamation board to cancel all proceedings taken in connection with the bond issue relating to project No. 6, and to take certain steps looking to the levying of a supplementary assessment No. 6 upon all the lands within the drainage district. (Stats. 1927, chap. 774, sec. 3, p. 1505.) It was further provided in the act (sec. 13, p. 1509) that any owner or holder of lands within the boundaries of the district whose lands were subject to assessment No. 6 or the supplemental assessment should have the right to present to any officer authorized by law to collect such assessment warrants of the district issued in connection with project No. 6 prior to the effective date of the act, May 26, 1927, and it was made the duty of such officers to accept such warrants in payment, at their face value, plus accrued interest, on account of such assessment.

In accordance with the provisions of these legislative enactments, the reclamation board, on January 25, 1928, made its order canceling all unsold bonds of the Sacramento and San Joaquin- Drainage District based upon and secured by the Sutter-Butte By-Pass Assessment No. 6, and directed

The statute makes it mandatory upon the petitioner, as county treasurer, to receive at full face value, and accept in lieu of so much cash, any warrant of the drainage district tendered by a landholder in payment of the assessment on his land. It is the settled law of this state that such a provision is valid. (Hershey v. Reclamation Dist. 730, 162 Cal. 401 , 405 [ 122 Pac. 1074 ].) The important question for our consideration is whether or not the respondents, state controller and state treasurer, have any duty to perform in the matter. If they have not, no writ should issue, for mandamus lies only to compel the performance of an act which the law specially enjoins as a duty resulting from an office, trust or station. (Code Civ. Proc., sec. 1085.) While this court will go to all reasonable lengths in interpreting the powers vested by the legislature in the ministerial officers of the state, in order to give effect to the laws and subserve the ends of justice, it will not by construction confer upon such officers authority which the legislature has seen fit to withhold. (San Francisco etc. L. Co. v. Banbury, 106 Cal. 129 , 135 [ 39 Pac. 439 ].) County treasurers are required to “settle with the [state] controller and pay over to the [state] treasurer all moneys in their possession belonging to the state.” (Pol. Code, sec. 3865.) Warrants are not money. While, in certain transactions, they may be made to represent money, they are- not money. There is not to be found any provision of law in the general statutes relating to the state treasurer which makes it the duty of that officer to accept warrants as cash in settling with county treasurers. The Refunding Act, supra, which makes it the

The petition for the writ is denied.

Shenk, ;J., Langdon, J., Preston, J., Curtis, ST., Richards, J., and Seawell, J., concurred.