A prominent Washington State video game company, Valve Corporation, creator of Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Left 4 Dead, has been sued by a former employee it converted into an independent contractor as an accommodation to allow her to relocate to California to undergo transgender transition surgery. This case…

Earlier today, President Obama signed into law the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), which the Senate and House passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. While the impetus for the new law has been trade secret theft by foreign and domestic interests in the form of economic espionage, the DTSA applies to…

This past month involved the settlement of a number of high profile IC misclassification cases. In one case, a federal court gave conditional approval to a $226 million settlement between FedEx and its Ground Division drivers, whereby each of over 2,000 drivers would receive on average over $110,000 before deductions…

Only two weeks after a federal court judge in California rejected a proposed $12.25 million independent contractor misclassification settlement between Lyft and its drivers in California, Uber announced late yesterday, April 21, that it had reached a proposed settlement with its drivers in two IC misclassification lawsuits in California and…

A Regional Director for the NLRB issued an unfair labor practice complaint on April 18, 2016 alleging that a transportation company “has misclassified its employee-drivers as independent contractors, thereby inhibiting them from engaging in Section 7 activity and depriving them of the protections of the [National Labor Relations] Act.” While…

The cases reported in this update continue to reflect the fact that IC misclassification cases cut across virtually all industries. Below are IC misclassification cases from such diverse industries as insurance, ride-sharing, restaurant, and the home heating and alarm industries. A Forbes article entitled “Is Your Company on the Independent…

Papers were filed in court today formally opposing the deal that Lyft agreed to with the lawyers representing over 100,000 Lyft drivers in their class action brought in the federal court in San Francisco.  The objectors were five Lyft drivers and two Teamsters union councils that are seeking to represent…

In February 2016, two federal appellate courts ruled in favor of companies in IC misclassification cases: one where the NLRB was reversed in a decision where the agency had found stagehands to be employees and not ICs; the other where an appellate court gave a small but important victory to…

Frances McMorris, who covers the transportation and hospitality industries for American City Business Journals (ACBJ), wrote an article on January 29 about the impact of the latest Uber lawsuit on businesses that use independent contractors and what actions companies can take to protect themselves from IC misclassification risks.  Two approaches…

This Update covers the two-month period of December 2015 and January 2016. The headnote for this period is: don’t classify drivers as ICs unless you do it right!

Eight of the nine cases reported below involve drivers. None of those companies appear to have undertaken a compliance initiative such as…