Yesterday, Uber Technologies, Inc. won a watershed case under federal and state wage laws on the issue of whether Uber drivers are independent contractors, as the company has steadfastly maintained. A federal district court in Pennsylvania granted summary judgment in favor of Uber concluding that UberBLACK limousine drivers, as a…

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,…

Last month, half of the cases that came to our attention in the area of independent contractor misclassification and compliance involved interesting issues concerning arbitration – and lessons for companies seeking to limit class action lawsuits by those they classify as ICs.

The first case involved an IC agreement that…

Last month was a busy and important month for IC misclassification and compliance law. Featured among the ten cases summarized below are the first-ever trial of an IC misclassification case in the on-demand, sharing economy (Lawson v. GrubHub Holdings, Inc.); oral argument before a state’s highest court over…

Earlier today, GrubHub, Inc. won its highly publicized case brought against it by a restaurant delivery driver / courier for allegedly misclassifying him as an independent contractor. The case drew sustained media attention during a non-jury trial in federal court in September 2017, as it was the first IC misclassification…

The California Supreme Court will hear oral argument tomorrow in a case that has the potential for altering the long-standing test in California for independent contractor status. The case is Dynamex Operations West v. Superior Court (No. S222732), which has been on appeal before the California Supreme Court since…

There were seven noteworthy cases in the area of independent contractor misclassification and compliance in January 2018 involving drivers of trucking companies, behavioral therapists, ride-sharing drivers, insurance agents, furniture delivery drivers, home care workers, and construction workers. Although IC misclassification is more prevalent in the home care and construction industries…

2017 was notable for a shift in the law of independent contractors. Part 1, published yesterday, discussed five key legal developments from 2017.  Part 2, below, offers readers predictions of what to expect in 2018 in this area of the law. Both parts also offer takeaways designed to maximize…