Pinion v. State Personnel Board

In Pinion v. State Personnel Board (1938) 29 Cal.App.2d 314, employees who had been appointed to junior positions were assigned intermediate duties, which they performed without having taken examinations to qualify for intermediate positions. The court refused to compel the Board to recognize the employees as holders of intermediate positions or to permit them to assume intermediate titles. "These employees were not lawfully holding these positions nor lawfully performing the duties thereof. They had assumed these positions without qualifying therefor . . . . These employees as to the positions they were occupying were de facto employees only, and they have no legal right to contend they should be permitted to assume the classification title to such positions . . . . If the appointing power could, by assigning duties of a higher nature to an employee, and the State Personnel Board could, by classifying those duties to a higher class than that of the employee's original position, give to an employee a permanent civil service status, the entire fabric of the civil service system would fail." ( Id., at pp. 318-319.)