Searles

The petitioner, charged with a misdemeanor in that he had operated a number of stamp vending machines without the license that a city ordinance required, first demurred and moved to dismiss, without success, and then filed this petition for an alternative writ of prohibition, leading to a peremptory writ. He made the municipal court in which he was being prosecuted a respondent, and named the People of the State of California, by their *677 attorney Evelle J. Younger, District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles, as the real party in interest. When the court granted petitioner's prayer for the peremptory writ, the real party in interest appealed. We are reversing the order.

The real issue on this appeal is whether the order was required by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Matter of the Application of Ralph M. Richardson (1915) 170 Cal. 68 [ 148 P. 213 ]. There, the petitioner for a writ of habeas corpus had been convicted, and was in custody, on a charge of having operated a match machine with a niekel-in-the-slot attachment, without first having procured a license from the tax collector, as required by an ordinance “imposing a license on nickel-in-the-slot machines.” The…