Many of the acts exclude from their protection casual employees. This term is a difficult one to define, and has been omitted in many of the acts. Where this is done all employees engaged in the usual course of the trade, business, occupation, or profession of their employer, with some exceptions, receive compensation. Ordinarily, an employment is casual when it is for a single day, or by the hour, but does not apply to one who is employed to render a service that recurs with some regularity. Thus, one who is employed as a workman in a sawmill on such days as it was in operation for four months was not a casual employee. Casual employment in the Connecticut act means occasional or incidental employment. In California, if the length of employment is less than a week it is casual, even though contrary to agreement the employee took more than a week to do the work for which he was hired, and which a skillful employee could have finished within a week.
"The question whether an employment is casual must be determined with reference to the scope and purpose of the hiring rather than with sole regard to the duration and regularity of the service. One who enters into a contract of employment for an entire season is not a casual employee merely because he may be required to work for only short and irregular periods." Thus, a longshoreman who is employed at a certain sum per hour to help load a ship, having frequently rendered a similar service on other occasions, is not a casual employee; nor is one who keeps machinery and boats in order at an amusement park; nor is a boy who is called at irregular intervals for service in a butcher's shop when extra help is needed, or in the absence of a regular employee; nor is one who is employed during a packing season to drive for a packer whenever he is needed.
The compensation law does not apply to independent contractors. It is difficult, however, to draw the line in many cases. Generally, an independent contractor is one who exercises an independent employment and contracts to do a piece of work according to his own method, without being subject to the control of the employer. A test that is sometimes applied is, who has the right to direct what shall be done and when and how, and who has the right of general control. When, therefore, one exercises an independent employment, selects his own help and has the control of them, and the method of conducting the work, he is an independent contractor. Again, he may change his relation for a time, and become an employee, or he may be a contractor for a part of his service and an employee for a part. Thus, one who was injured while operating a launch to bring supplies to a dredge for his employer was an employee and not an independent contractor, though he was one in conducting the work of dredging. Likewise, a physician who is employed on a salary by another physician, who in turn is serving a manufactory, is an employee of the latter and not an independent contractor, though he is still engaged to some extent in his own private practice.