Wallace

Appellants (respondents in the trial court) appeal from a writ of mandate requiring the State Personnel Board to determine the amount of salary to which respondent (petitioner in the trial court) is entitled for the period from October 16, 1957, to December 18, 1959. We will refer to the parties hereinafter by their designations in the trial court, for the reason that we are adopting, for the most part, the opinion of the trial judge.

Respondent is a senior electrical engineer with the State Division of Architecture, a civil service position. Both this litigation and an earlier proceeding in mandamus stem from a request by petitioner for three months’ sick leave in 1955, which request had been disallowed and his absence treated as an automatic resignation from state service under Government Code, section 19503. An appeal to the State Personnel Board, and from the adverse ruling there via the mandamus route through the superior court to this court resulted in a previous holding here that a civil servant could be ill (and thus entitled to sick leave under Cal. Admin. Code, tit. 2, § 401) due to mental and emotional causes as well as physical (the mental illness in this case being…