Pacific Employers Insurance v. Industrial Accident Commission

Petitioners are seeking a writ of review of, and pray for an order annulling, an award of compensation made by the respondent commission for personal injuries to a newsboy selling the Los Angeles Times. The only question involved here is the application to the facts of the case of section 8 (a) of the Workmen’s Compensation Act defining the term “employee”. Stated concisely, the question is: Was the injured hoy an employee of the newspaper at the time of his injury?

*760 For circulation purposes, the city of Los Angeles was divided into districts, each looked after by a district manager for the Los Angeles Times. Davenport, the employee, had been selling the Sunday edition of the Times for two years, and it is admitted he was in the course of his employment when he was struck by an automobile and received the injuries for which the award of compensation was made. There was keen sales competition between the Times and another Los Angeles paper. The city circulation manager of the Times testified before the commission that the Times was “interested and concerned with seeing that there was a boy selling [the Times] in each major location in which the [other paper] was being sold”..…