Opinion ID: 1245574
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: (1a) In administering the payment of welfare benefits, the Plumas County Board of Supervisors acts as an agent of the California Department of Health and Welfare and consequently the supervisors were bound by the injunction rendered in Cooper v. Obledo.

Text: Petitioners initially contend that the judgment of contempt is invalid because they were not bound by the injunctive order which the trial court found they had wilfully disobeyed. Petitioners emphasize that neither Plumas County nor they, as individuals, were named defendants in the Cooper v. Obledo action, and that they received no notice and were afforded no opportunity to defend that action. Under these circumstances, petitioners urge that they were denied due process by being held in contempt for violating the injunctive order issued in that case. The United States Supreme Court faced and explicitly rejected an almost identical due process contention over three-quarters of a century ago in In re Lennon (1897) 166 U.S. 548 [41 L.Ed. 1110, 17 S.Ct. 658]. In Lennon, an employee of a railroad company who had been found in contempt for violating the terms of an injunction issued against his employer, maintained that the contempt judgment was invalid in that he had not personally been a party to the action in which the injunction had been issued. The Supreme Court responded: The facts that [the employee] was not a party to such suit, nor served with process of subpoena, nor had notice of the application made by the complainant for the mandatory injunction, nor was served by the officers of the court with such injunction are immaterial, so long as it was made to appear that he had notice of the issuing of an injunction by the court. To render [an employee] amenable to an injunction it is neither necessary that he should have been party to the suit in which the injunction was issued, nor to have been actually served with a copy of it, so long as he appears to have had actual notice. [Citations.] (166 U.S. at p. 554 [41 L.Ed. at p. 1113].) In Berger v. Superior Court (1917) 175 Cal. 719, 721 [167 P. 143, 15 A.L.R. 373], our court reiterated and explained the contours and basic rationale of the rule applied in Lennon. We stated: In matters of injunction ... it has been a common practice to make the injunction run also to classes of persons through whom the enjoined person may act, such as agents, servants, employees, aiders, abettors, etc., though not parties to the action, and this practice has always been upheld by the courts, and any of such parties violating its terms with notice thereof are held guilty of contempt for disobedience of the judgment.... [T]he whole effect of this is simply to make the injunction effectual against all through whom the enjoined party may act, and to prevent the prohibited action by persons acting in concert with or in support of the claim of the enjoined party, who are in fact his aiders and abettors. (Italics omitted.) (See, e.g., Pitchess v. Superior Court (1969) 2 Cal. App.3d 653, 656 [83 Cal. Rptr. 41]; Mattos v. Superior Court (1939) 30 Cal. App.2d 641, 647 [86 P.2d 1056].) In the instant case, of course, the injunctive order in the Cooper v. Obledo action was directed at agents of the defendants, and the judgment contemplated that individual counties would be bound by the order. As we have seen, the judgment specifically provided that defendants, their successors in office, agents and employees will restore to plaintiffs and the class they represent the AFDC benefit unlawfully withheld, and the procedure for repayment established by the judgment explicitly stipulated that [c]ounty welfare departments will redetermine AFDC eligibility and make restitution of grant amounts unlawfully withheld pursuant to the invalid regulations. Petitioners do not challenge the continued vitality of Berger's conclusion that an agent is bound by an injunction issued against his principal (see, e.g., Regal Knitwear Co. v. Board (1945) 324 U.S. 9, 13-14 [89 L.Ed. 661, 666-667, 65 S.Ct. 478]), nor the fact that the Cooper v. Obledo judgment intended to compel the county to pay retroactive welfare benefits. Petitioners contend, however, that the Cooper v. Obledo court lacked the power to bind absent counties because, in petitioners' view, counties and their respective boards of supervisors are not agents of the state in this context. As we explain, the governing statutory provisions and a long and uniform line of judicial precedents conclusively refute petitioners' contention. The statutory provisions governing the administration of the state welfare system are contained in division 9, part 2 of the Welfare and Institutions Code, commencing with section 10550. Section 10550 provides for the establishment, within the state Health and Welfare Agency, of a Department of Benefit Payments, and section 10600 states in relevant part: It is hereby declared that provision for public social services in this code is a matter of statewide concern. The Department of Benefit Payments is hereby designated as the single state agency with full power to supervise every phase of the administration of aid ... for which grants-in-aid are received from the United States government or made by the state in order to secure full compliance with the applicable provisions of state and federal laws. (See also Welf. & Inst. Code, § 10603.) After establishing the Department of Benefit Payments as the single supervisory agency in this field, the code goes on, in section 10800, to assign responsibility for the local administration of state welfare laws to county boards of supervisors, who are to establish county welfare departments, headed by a county welfare director. [5] Section 10802 provides, in turn, that the county welfare director, who acts for and in behalf of the board of supervisors, shall abide by all lawful directives of the [Department of Benefit Payments] relating to aid.... (See also Welf. & Inst. Code, §§ 10809, 10825, 10826, 10827.) Thus, the statutes establish an administrative hierarchy in which the state Department of Benefit Payments exercises ultimate supervisory authority over the payment of welfare benefits and the county boards of supervisors, acting through the county welfare departments, function as agents of the Department of Benefit Payments in administering such payments. The existence of such a principal-agent relationship between the state welfare agency and the county boards of supervisors is confirmed by a long and unbroken line of California decisions. Over 40 years ago, in San Francisco v. Collins (1932) 216 Cal. 187, 191-192 [13 P.2d 912], this court declared: The duty to relieve the indigent, established by state statutes, is ... a matter of statewide interest, in which the city and county of San Francisco is governed by the general law, and acts as ... an agent of the state. (Italics added.) Eight years later, in County of Alameda v. Janssen (1940) 16 Cal.2d 276, 284 [106 P.2d 11, 130 A.L.R. 1141], we again noted that county boards of supervisors ... [act] as agents for the state in dispensing old age relief. More recently, in Mooney v. Pickett (1971) 4 Cal.3d 669, 679 [94 Cal. Rptr. 279, 483 P.2d 1231], we reiterated the teachings of Collins and Janssen, declaring that [i]n administering General Assistance relief the county acts as an agent of the state. In addition, several Court of Appeal decisions have explicitly held that the county acts as an agent of the state in the administration of the AFDC programs involved in the instant case. (See County of Marin v. Martin (1974) 43 Cal. App.3d 1, 3-4 [117 Cal. Rptr. 364]; County of Contra Costa v. Social Welfare Board (1962) 199 Cal. App.2d 468, 473 [18 Cal. Rptr. 573]; cf. Ramos v. County of Madera (1971) 4 Cal.3d 685, 693-694 [94 Cal. Rptr. 421, 484 P.2d 93].) Petitioners attempt to avoid this extensive array of authority by asserting that the county is only a special agent, rather than a general agent, of the state welfare agency, and is consequently not bound by an injunctive order issued against the state agency. This argument is flawed on two levels. First, absolutely nothing in either the statutory provisions or the prior authorities supports the petitioners' classification of counties as special agents. Civil Code section 2297 provides that [a]n agent for a particular act or transaction is called a special agent [and] [a]ll others are general agents, (italics added), and section 3 of the Restatement Second of Agency explains that (1) A general agent is an agent authorized to conduct a series of transactions involving a continuity of service. (2) A special agent is an agent authorized to conduct a single transaction or a series of transactions not involving continuity of service. (Italics added.) (2) Inasmuch as county boards of supervisors bear an on-going statutory responsibility for the local administration of welfare benefits, such boards of supervisors are clearly general agents of the state welfare agency with respect to such administrative duties. Moreover, nothing in either the Berger decision or the numerous cases following Berger supports petitioners' suggestion that a special agent is not bound by an injunctive order that directly relates to actions falling within the scope of his special agency. (See, e.g., Kirby v. San Francisco Sav. & Loan Soc. (1928) 95 Cal. App. 757 [273 P. 609].) Indeed, the fundamental rationale of Berger demonstrates that a special agent would necessarily be bound in such an instance, because, if he were not, a principal could avoid the force of an injunction simply by acting through special agents rather than general agents. `[C]ourts do not look with indulgence upon schemes, however skillfully devised, designed to thwart their orders.' ( Morton v. Superior Court (1884) 65 Cal. 496, 497 [4 P. 489].) Since the Department of Benefit Payments could comply with the provisions of the Cooper v. Obledo order requiring the payment of retroactive welfare benefits only through the actions of county welfare departments, it is clear that such counties could not disobey the order with impunity. [6] (1b) Accordingly, we conclude that petitioners' contention that they are not bound by the injunctive order issued in Cooper v. Obledo is specious. [7]