Butcher v. Civil Serv. Comm'n Of City Of Philadelphia

• Decision Date: 29 September 1948
• Parties: BUTCHER v. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION OF CITY OF PHILADELPHIA et al.
• Court: Pennsylvania Superior Court

163 Pa.Super. 343
61 A.2d 367

BUTCHER
v.
CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION OF CITY OF PHILADELPHIA et al.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

Sept. 29, 1948.

Appeal No. 118, October term, 1947, from judgment of Court of Common Pleas No. 6, Philadelphia County, as of September term, 1946, No. 2457; Curtis Bok, President Judge.

Mandamus action by Harry K. Butcher against Civil Service Commission of the City of Philadelphia and others. From the judgment, Harry K. Butcher appeals.

Affirmed.

Richardson Blair, Philip Price, and William Barclay Lex, all of Philadelphia, for appellant.

James Francis Ryan, Asst. City Sol., and Frank F. Truscott, City Sol., both of Philadelphia, for appellee.

Before RHODES, P. J., and HIRT, RENO, DITHRICH, ROSS, ARNOLD and FINE, JJ.

ARNOLD, Judge.

This is a mandamus action brought by an individual against the three members of the Civil Service Commission of the City of Philadelphia, which conducts examinations, inter alia, for hosemen for the Bureau of Fire, under the provisions of what is known as the ‘City Charter.’ Act of June 25, 1919, P.L. 581. See 53 P.S. § 3321 et seq. Article XIX, § 14 of that Act, 53 P.S. § 3334, provides in part: ‘All minutes, examination papers, * * * and other records of the commission, * * * shall be preserved, and shall, subject to reasonable regulations as to the time of examination, be open to public inspection * * *.’

The petitioner was a citizen-taxpayer of Philadelphia and on October 8, 1946, was refused permission to inspect, during ordinary business hours, the questions used by the respondents as a part of the examination for hosemen in 1944. He averred that ‘the concealment of the 1944 examination questions will permit the re-use of some or all of [them] * * * [in the] * * * Examination * * * for November 1946, and thus give unfair advantage to * * *the

61 A.2d 368

1944 examinees * * * who are candidates in 1946.’ The respondents' return admitted the refusal and as justification pleaded that the 1944 examinations were taken by about one thousand applicants; that the mental test was a series of ‘true’ or ‘false’ and ‘multiple choice’ type questions, as to which the applicant indicated his answers on a separate scoring sheet; that all questions were required to be returned with the scoring sheets, and that ‘Many of these questions are of a nature which require the use of similar questions in subsequent examinations. * * *’ The return averred that the policy of the commission was to withhold questions of this type from public information, and that instead twenty sample questions were given any applicant who requested such information. The respondents also pleaded that a new examination was scheduled for the immediate future (November, 1946) and that the inspection of the 1944 questions (at least some of which would be repeated in November, 1946) would give an improper advantage to the 1946 examinees, and that petitioner did not aver that he had ‘any special or...