In DeCuir v. County of Los Angeles (1998) 64 Cal.App.4th 75, the plaintiff alleged that the county's examination process for a civil service position as a district attorney was unfair and resulted in his achieving a low exam score and not being selected for the position. The examination was given under the county's civil service commission rules, which included an internal procedure for review of administrative decisions that the plaintiff invoked. The procedure included a provision authorizing the commission to either hold an evidentiary hearing or make a decision on the merits based on a review of written materials submitted by the parties. After unsuccessful exhaustion of that procedure, and ultimately being denied a second hearing, the plaintiff filed an action for money damages against the county, bypassing any challenge to the administrative process or decision by proceeding in mandamus. (DeCuir, supra, 64 Cal.App.4th at pp. 76-79.) After the plaintiff in DeCuir obtained a jury verdict, the defendants appealed, contending that his exclusive form of judicial review was a proceeding in mandamus, not a jury trial, because mandamus is the proper method of obtaining judicial review of most agency decisions. The Court of Appeal agreed, concluding that although a proceeding in administrative mandamus under section 1094.5 would not have been properly available because the plaintiff, who was bound by the civil service rules, had no absolute right to a hearing before the commission under those rules, his remedy was a proceeding in ordinary or traditional mandamus under section 1085 in order to compel the commission to exercise its discretion to grant the hearing he had sought. (DeCuir, supra, 64 Cal.App.4th at pp. 80-83.) In other words, the commission's discretionary denial of a hearing under the applicable civil service rules was itself a reviewable determination but through traditional, as opposed to administrative, mandamus. (Id. at pp. 82-83) The plaintiff in DeCuir thus could not bypass judicial review of the civil service commission's decision without avoiding issue or claim preclusion in a later action for damages involving the same primary right as a result of that unchallenged decision having become final. (DeCuir, supra, 64 Cal.App.4th at p. 83.)