Reiger v. City of Seattle, 35370

• Decision Date: 02 February 1961
• Docket Number: No. 35370,35370
• Citation: 359 P.2d 151,57 Wn.2d 651
• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Parties: Mona REIGER, Appellant, v. CITY OF SEATTLE, a municipal corporation, Burton J. Wheelon, Robert H. Harlin, Warren H. Berry, Roy A. Palm and H. J. Lawrence, Respondents.

Page 651

57 Wn.2d 651

359 P.2d 151

Mona REIGER, Appellant, v. CITY OF SEATTLE, a municipal corporation, Burton J. Wheelon Robert H. Harlin, Warren H. Berry, Roy A. Palm and H. J. Lawrence, Respondents.

No. 35370.

Supreme Court of Washington, Department 1.

Feb. 2, 1961.

Rehearing Denied April 24, 1961.

Byron D. Coney, Seattle, for appellant.

A. C. Van Soelen, Corporation Counsel, Peter K. Steere, Asst. Corporation Counsel, Seattle, for respondents.

WEAVER, Judge.

Defendants' motion for summary judgment having been granted, plaintiff appeals from a judgment dismissing her action.

Plaintiff has been a full-time provisional police matron of the city of Seattle since December 28, 1953. Although the position is classified under the city's civil service system, she was not required to take a civil service examination until April 8, 1958.

Plaintiff passed the written and physical examinations, but failed the oral examination. She protested to the civil service commission the 'evaluation and grade given' her by the examiners and the 'composition of the Interviewing Board.' Her request for a hearing was granted.

Plaintiff commenced this action (it is not an appeal from the action of the commission), alleging that, although the commission determined she was entitled to a passing grade on her oral examination, her standing 'would still not be high enough to warrant her certification to the chief of police as one of those eligible to receive appointment to an existing vacancy.'

Plaintiff alleges ten different grounds on which the oral examination given by the civil service commission 'was arbitrary, capricious, in abuse of the discretion of the Commission, contrary to law, and proceeded on a fundamentally wrong basis.' She alleges further that the hearing before the civil service commission was arbitrary and capricious.

In her complaint against the city, the members of the civil service commission, its chief examiner and secretary, plaintiff prays for one of the following alternatives: (1) that defendants be restrained from removing her from her position; (2) that defendants be ordered to certify those eligible for the position, based solely on the results of the written and physical examinations, excluding the results of the oral examination; or (3) that another oral examination be given the applicants who passed the physical and written portions of the examination.

Plaintiff's three assignments of error are really one: that the court erred when it entered summary judgment for defendants.

Implementation of employment by civil service procedures is essentially administrative. In no wise can courts perform supervisory powers. Counsel do not quarrel with the rule we announced in In re Harmon, 1958, 52 Wash.2d 118, 120, 323 P.2d 653, 655:

'Agencies exercising essentially administrative functions may, among other things, act as fact-finding bodies to ascertain qualifications of...