In the Courts (8 cases)

• TAX COURT DECISION REMINDS COMPANIES THAT “OFFICERS” ARE STATUTORY EMPLOYEES AND THEREFORE CANNOT BE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS. The United States Tax Court held that a company that was engaged in the buying, reconditioning, and selling of cars misclassified as independent contractors instead of employees two of

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This month’s headline developments are the crescendo of cases finding against FedEx Ground’s classification of drivers as independent contractors.  On the heels of last month’s decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which held that FedEx Ground had misclassified drivers who should have been classified as…

In the past week, the Supreme Court of Kansas and the National Labor Relations Board have issued lengthy, comprehensive opinions finding that FedEx misclassified its Home Delivery and Ground Division drivers as independent contractors as a matter of law. Those two decisions, which dealt with drivers in Kansas and Connecticut,…

On September 28, 2014, Governor Jerry Brown of California signed a bill that puts a potentially enormous liability risk on companies that use workers supplied by “labor contractors” that fail to pay all wages due the workers. Assembly Bill 1897 requires client employers to “share with a labor contractor all…

Today’s online edition of New York Magazine’s “Daily Intelligencer” includes a comprehensive article on how Silicon Valley start-up tech companies using “the 1099 model” may be exposed to employment, tax, and benefit law liabilities that could drive them out of business or cause them to change to a W-2 model.…

The news from Washington, D.C. yesterday is that the U.S. Department of Labor is funding 19 states’ efforts to crack down on businesses that unwittingly or intentionally fail to make unemployment contributions for individuals misclassified as independent contractors. While class actions in court continue to receive the most attention, unemployment…

This month’s headline developments are the seismic decisions, issued on August 27, 2014 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, concluding as a matter of law that FedEx Ground had misclassified over 2,300 drivers in California and a smaller group of drivers in Oregon. The appellate decision…

FedEx Ground has been at the epicenter of the crackdown on IC misclassification by government regulators, state legislators, and plaintiffs’ class action lawyers since 2007, when a California appellate court found single-route FedEx Ground delivery drivers to have been misclassified as independent contractors (ICs) instead of employees.[1] But in 2009[2]…