State Compensation Insurance Fund v. Industrial Accident Commission

BARNARD, P. J.

In this proceeding in

certiorari

petitioner seeks to annul an award of the respondent commission in favor of the respondent Grashel.

The petitioner was the insurance carrier for Mrs. Alice Johnson, the owner of a ranch. She entered into a contract with one J. W. Gilstrap by which Gilstrap agreed to furnish a crew and pick a crop of olives growing on her land. Gilstrap agreed to do a first-class job and not to injure the trees, and Mrs. Johnson agreed to pay him $20 a ton for olives picked on one section of the ranch and $30 a ton for those picked on another section. Gilstrap put a crew of men to work picking

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these olives, and at the same time he had another crew picking olives on an adjoining ranch. After the work of picking olives had been started on Mrs. Johnson’s ranch the respondent Grashel came along and applied to Gilstrap for a job. Gilstrap put him to work picking olives on this ranch at an agreed price per box, and about eight days later he fell from a ladder and broke his arm. The respondent commission made an award in his favor as against this petitioner, discharging Gilstrap and Mrs. Johnson from liability, and this proceeding followed.

Among other things, the respondent commission found as follows:

“Harold Grashel, applicant, while employed as an olive picker near Terra Bella, California, on January 20, 1941, by Alice Johnson, the contract of employment by and between the parties being an implied one made through the medium of J. W. Gilstrap, an ostensible agent of Alice Johnson, sustained injury occurring in the course of and arising out of his employment. ...”

“The defendant, Alice Johnson, owner and operator of the Johnson Ranch upon which the applicant sustained the injury herein, had placed one J. W. Gilstrap in such a position on her ranch property as afforded the applicant reasonable grounds for believing that said J. W. Gilstrap was in fact an agent of the owner of said ranch, to wit, Alice Johnson, and in undertaking such employment, he, the applicant, was the employee of the owner of said ranch and subsequent to the beginning” of said employment the owner of said ranch, to wit, Alice Johnson, at no time served notice in writing, orally or otherwise, upon the applicant that she was not in fact his employer and that J. W. Gilstrap was an independent contractor and his employer who had contracted to pick the olives on her ranch and that the applicant must look to said J. W. Gilstrap for payment of his wages and for compensation for injury, if any be sustained.”