Dominguez

Petitioners in this mandate proceeding are the plaintiffs in an underlying action filed in the superior court on October 20, 1977. The complaint in the underlying action prays for damages, compensatory and punitive, against several defendants arising from the wrongful death of the decedent allegedly proximately caused by the several acts of negligence of City of San Gabriel (City) and other defendants named in separate causes of action.

A brief statement of the pertinent allegations which bottom the several causes of action reveal that Billy Joe Mcllvain, a police officer formally retired by City on December 15, 1976, for a work connected disability did nevertheless on February 28, 1977, “effect” an “arrest” upon 18-year-old David Dominguez, the decedent, in the presence of decedent’s friends by showing decedent a “flat badge” and “kidnaped” him to McIlvain’s home whereupon McIlvain “beat, stabbed, and inflicted upon David multiple gunshot wounds” which resulted in David’s death.

Interlaced with the above, it is alleged there had been for some time prior to Mcllvain’s retirement, and on the date of decedent’s arrest, an on-going feud between Mcllvain and David; City…