For the past 18 months, insurance companies have been holding their collective breath to see if an appellate court would affirm or reverse an Ohio federal district court decision concluding that thousands of current and former agents for American Family Insurance Company were employees and not independent contractors under ERISA,

Earlier today, the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision overturning a union-friendly test for independent contractor status that had been adopted by the Board during the Obama Administration. In its decision in SuperShuttle DFW Inc., the NLRB, which is now controlled by a majority of Board members appointed by

Independent insurance sales agents have been treated as independent contractors for decades. But recently, class action lawyers have begun to target insurance companies with claims that insurers have misclassified these sales agents as ICs instead of employees. These lawsuits allege that insurance companies have violated wage and hour, employee benefit,

The most notable legal developments during the June/July  period were appellate decisions: one by the Vermont Supreme Court holding that a construction company did not misclassify a carpentry contractor under that state’s unemployment insurance law; the other by the California Court of Appeal, an intermediate level appellate court, affirming a