Gates v. Daley

In Gates v. Daley (1921) 54 Cal.App. 654, a truck driver's wife got into an accident after he asked her to drive for him when he became tired. (Ibid.) The trucking company that employed the driver argued that it was not liable because the driver's wife was not its agent. (Id. at p. 655.) The court disagreed, noting: "The cases in which masters have been held liable for the negligence of assistants to their regularly employed servants, laying aside those instances in which the servants have engaged the assistants under an express authority conferred by the masters, seem to be divided into two classes: First, those cases in which the assistants committed the acts of negligence in the presence, and, therefore, impliedly, under the direction, of the servants; second, those in which the assistants, although being negligent while working out of the presence of the servants, were engaged in the rendition of services which they had been accustomed to perform at the servants' request for considerable periods of time, thus giving rise to the view that the servants enjoyed an implied authority to engage them." (Ibid.) The court noted that the California Supreme Court had already aligned itself with cases applying the first type of liability, then concluded that the present case was of that type. (Id. at p. 656.)