Darrah

This is an appeal from a judgment against the defendant which was entered for failure to answer after a demurrer to the complaint had "been overruled. The problem for solution is whether a district attorney may maintain an action in his own name for necessary expenses incurred and paid by him for the services of detectives employed in the course of the prosecution of criminal cases.

The complaint alleges that the plaintiff as district attorney of San Joaquin County had expended from his private funds the sum of $454.95 as reasonable compensation for the services of several detectives, who are termed “operatives,” employed by him to investigate and report to him the qualifications and desirability of accepting prospective jurymen who were summoned on a venire for the trial of criminal cases then pending in the county; that this service was necessary; that the claims of these agents had not been assigned to the plaintiff; that the plaintiff regularly presented to the board of supervisors his individual claim for payment of these expenses duly itemized and verified, which were disallowed. This suit was then commenced.

The defendant County of San Joaquin demurred to this complaint…