Applying a rule it considers less than ideal, that “an injunction requiring the defendant to take affirmative action (a so-called mandatory injunction) is automatically stayed during the pendency of the appeal,” the Supreme Court today in Daly v. Board of Supervisors concludes that the filing of an appeal held in abeyance a superior court’s order mandating a county’s board of supervisors to remove and replace one of its members.
The superior court had so ruled after finding the San Bernardino County board had violated the Brown Act‘s open-meetings provisions in filling a vacancy. The Supreme Court expressly refrains from addressing the merits of the ruling, which is currently on appeal.
The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Leondra Kruger acknowledges that “the distinction between a mandatory and a prohibitory injunction [the latter not being automatically stayed on appeal] sometimes proves easier to state than to apply.” It then uses considerable ink attempting to elucidate the difference, including limiting some broad language in a century-old decision — United Railroads v. Superior Court (1916) 172 Cal. 80. The court also encourages the Legislature to come up with a new, “more flexible approach,” commenting that “the mandatory/prohibitory distinction . . . appears imperfectly aligned with the equitable considerations relevant to the question of staying an order pending appeal.”
When review was granted, we said the court had limited the case to a specified issue. Nope. The court actually said the stated issue was an included one, and two weeks later it clarified that “[t]he parties are also to brief the issue presented in the petition for review.” And, in fact, the court today doesn’t resolve the “included” issue, finding the issue relevant only to whether, as an alternative to recognizing an automatic stay, the Court of Appeal should have issued a supersedeas writ as a matter of discretion.
Justice Kruger has written for the court about appellate procedural issues before. (See here, here, and here.)
The court reverses the Fourth District, Division Two, Court of Appeal, which had summarily denied a petition for a writ of supersedeas.