Shields

This is an application for a writ of mandate, an alternative writ having been issued by the Supreme Court and made returnable before this court. The purpose of the action is to compel the respondent county treasurer to pay from a fund asserted to be in the county treasury to the credit of the petitioner, a certain warrant issued by the petitioner district. The petition alleges that the petitioner is a water storage district organized and existing under and by virtue of the California Water Storage District Act; that the respondent Shields is the county treasurer of Kern County; that in the year 1929 an assessment was levied upon the lands within the district in the sum of $942,731.11, the assessment being unpaid and bonds being issued and sold for that amount in accordance with the provisions of the Water Storage District Act; that pursuant to the provisions of the act named, the petitioner has from time to time called installments of accrued interest on said assessment and said installments have been paid to respondent and by him forthwith paid into the county treasury of Kern County to the credit of the bond fund of petitioner; that on June 28, 1932, and ever since that date,…

I am in accord with the conclusion of the Appellate Court that the entire loss due to the alleged robbery cannot be cast upon the petitioning Water Storage District. My decision that a hearing should be granted is based on the proposition that when moneys in the custody of the county treasurer in his office are taken from him by robbery it cannot be said that any particular funds have been stolen, but rather it must be held that the sum total of funds in the custody of the treasurer is reduced pro tanto by the robbery. The total of funds in the legal custody of the county treasurer consists in part of funds which are the property of the county, and in part of the funds of the Water Storage District, which is petitioner herein, and of irrigation and other districts, if such there be, which under the law deposit moneys with the county treasurer of Kern County. When the sum total of all funds in the custody of the treasurer is reduced by robbery, I am of the view that the loss affects the entire fund in the treasury and should be borne proportionately by all who have an interest in the fund. The treasury, in which all funds are in the custody of the treasurer by law, sustains the…