McClatchy

This was an application for a writ of mandamus, directed to the appellant, as secretary of the state board of health of the state of California, commanding him to permit the respondents to inspect and take copies of the written reports of Doctors Mauser and Ryfkogel of a bacteriological examination of an alleged ease of bubonic plague made for the state board of health.

The petition for. the writ was filed with the court below, and an alternative writ issued thereupon, on the third day of August, 1900. In the petition,—to wit, the affidavit of Herbert A. French,—it is stated that he is a reporter and employee of respondents, who are proprietors and publishers of the Evening Bee, a newspaper of general circulation, published in the city of Sacramento, and that on the second day of August he went to the office of the state board of health located in the state capítol building at Sacramento, and made application to appellant Matthews, being then a member and secretary of the state board of health, to inspect said reports, and to take copies thereof for the nse of his employers, the respondents, for the purpose of publishing the same, or so much as they might deem fit and proper, in…