On September 20, 2021, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed Grubhub, Inc.’s lower court victory in a class action case involving the alleged misclassification of a former driver. The driver claimed he was misclassified as an independent contractor and asserted claims for minimum wage, overtime and expense reimbursement. The lower court denied class certification and entered a judgment in favor of Grubhub in February 2018. In so doing, the court applied the multi-factor Borello test to assess whether the driver qualified as an independent contractor. The judge ...

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Tuesday, December 31st, to halt enforcement of California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), regarding truck drivers, only hours before the law went into effect on January 1, 2020.  AB 5, often referred to as the gig worker law, codifies and expands the “ABC” test set forth in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, making it much harder for companies to claim workers are independent contractors.

Although AB 5 exempts a number of professions and services from the ABC test, truck drivers are not included among the exemptions ...