City of Los Angeles v. Superior Court

Personal injury action for battery by a police officer. The basic issue in this application for extraordinary writ is the extent to which police department records of its officers are discoverable in a civil action as a matter of course.

Shirley Ann Ferguson, plaintiff herein, avers she was picnicking in a Los Angeles city park on 14 December 1969 when Officer Donald W. Murphy set upon her with a club and “struck, beat and bruised” her. The officer, she asserts, was acting within the course and scope of his employ ment as a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. Plaintiff filed her action in the superior court against the City of Los Angeles, Officer Murphy, and others. Defendant city appeared in the action, but Officer Murphy has not been served. According to the city’s answers to interrogatories, the officer resigned from the police department on the day of the incident and has since moved to another state.

Plaintiff propounded the following written interrogatories, among others, to defendant:

Defendant objected to these interrogatories as irrelevant to the issues and not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. It additionally…