29 Cal. 2d 834 - Fields v. Sanders’s Empirical Analysis
1947
Citation profile
16 federal appellate · 67 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 88 later decisions — most recently February 2006 · most notably 2 Cal. 3d 956 - Hinman v. Westinghouse Electric Co. (1970), 41 Cal. 3d 962 - Perez v. Van Groningen & Sons, Inc. (1986)
16 federal appellate · 67 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Mosley v. Arden Farms Co. · Matter of Leonbruno v. . Champlain Silk Mills · Carr v. Wm. C. Crowell Co. · 21 Cal. 2d 109 - Deevy v. Tassi · Kish v. California State Automobile Ass'n
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 88 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Responsibility of the principal results from acts so committed even though they be contrary to the principal's explicit instructions or otherwise unauthorized, or malicious or wilful. In considering whether an unauthorized wrongful act of an agent is attributable to his principal, we cannot look to the nature of such act alone to see whether it was committed in and as part of the transaction of the principal's business, but we must consider as well the activity of the agent on behalf of the principal in connection with which the act was committed. The inquiry is not whether the wrongful act itself was authorized but whether it was committed in the course of a series of acts of the agent which were authorized by the principal. Of course, where the agent, for however brief a space of time, has ceased to serve his principal, he alone is responsible for his acts during the period of such cessation. ..."”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“[I]f reasonable men could not differ as to whether the evidence does or does not establish the existence of a fact, the court will not submit the issue to the jury.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“'... the conduct of Fred Sanders [truck driver] shall be deemed by you to have been the conduct of Krieger Oil Company [his employer] ...'”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.