A principal is bound by acts of his agent, under a merely ostensible authority, to those persons only who have in good faith, and without want of ordinary care, incurred a liability or parted with value, upon the faith thereof.
Cal. Civ. Code § 2334
Mutual Obligations of Principals and Third Persons
Applied in 26 court decisions — leading case Hobart v. Hobart Estate Co. (1945)
Most recently applied in Compass Bank v. Morris Cerullo World Evangelism (June 2017)
Amended by Stats. 1905, Ch. 457.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.