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posted by janrinok on Sunday February 11 2018, @05:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the losing-track-of-these-company-names dept.

In what is believed to be the first gig economy case to be fully decided on the merits, Grubhub has beaten back a labor lawsuit filed by one of its former drivers.

In a court opinion released Thursday by US Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, "the Court finds that Grubhub has satisfied its burden of showing that Mr. Lawson was properly classified as an independent contractor."

Both sides had agreed that Judge Corley, rather than a jury, would decide the case in her San Francisco federal courtroom. She heard closing arguments in late October 2017.

[...] Part of what may have doomed Lawson's own case was that, in Judge Corley's estimation, in addition to working for other gig economy companies while simultaneously working for Grubhub, he was fundamentally "not credible."

[...] Lawson, by his own admission, "gamed the app" by scheduling himself for a work shift (a "block" in company parlance) but received few, if any, actual delivery orders by putting his phone in airplane mode, among other tactics.

"Mr. Lawson's claimed ignorance of his dishonest conduct is not credible," Judge Corley wrote. "Mr. Lawson would remember if after he filed this lawsuit against Grubhub he cheated Grubhub. If he had not moved his smart phone to airplane mode, intentionally toggled available late, or deliberately engaged in other conduct to get paid for doing nothing he would have denied doing so at trial. But he did not."

[...] Michael LeRoy, a professor of labor law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Ars that the case has "limited precedential value."

"Going forward," he emailed, "lawyers who bring these types of lawsuits should have reservations about pushing too far or long with a plaintiff who can be shown to cheat and who gives sworn deposition or trial testimony that is not credible."

Ars Technica


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Entropy on Sunday February 11 2018, @08:00PM (9 children)

    by Entropy (4228) on Sunday February 11 2018, @08:00PM (#636422)

    First of all, this is using California as a model. California should never be used as a model for anything but failure. Their government is bankrupt, and constantly getting bailouts from everyone else. But enough on that:

    1. Yes. Uber does control the operation as a whole.
    2. No. They worker can not come into work with no notice on any day they choose. They can never return to work, or work every day in a given week completely.
    3. Questionable. I suppose it depends on what "detail control" is. Is it that they need to drive from A, to B or drive from A, to B along a certain route?

    In civilized parts of the country, the distinction between employee/contractor is employees have a lot more control imposed on them by the employer. Contractors can often come into work whenever they want, stop work without notice, etc. Here's an example:
    Employer-Employee: I need you do do XYZ on monday from 8am-5pm.
    Contractor: I need you to do XYZ by Tuesday.

    That's much simplified, of course. Contractors are not always screwed, either. They have huge tax advantages over employees.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday February 11 2018, @09:26PM (1 child)

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Sunday February 11 2018, @09:26PM (#636450) Homepage Journal

    Their government is bankrupt, and constantly getting bailouts from everyone else

    What are you talking about?

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @01:51AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @01:51AM (#636527)

      To expand: By itself, Progressive Cali subsidizes the existence of several of the Reactionary states.

      Blue State Voters Subsidize Southern Red State Voters, Not the Other Way Around [truth-out.org]

      Mitt Romney received his greatest support from a significant portion of Americans he referred to as "moochers", who reside in the rural South. The Tax Foundation found that the Southern states have the largest percentage of people who don't pay income taxes, in general, due to low income or tax avoidance:

      Nine of the ten states with the largest percentage of nonpayers are in the South and Southwest. In Mississippi, 45 percent of federal tax returns remit nothing or receive money with their federal tax returns; that is the highest percentage nationally. Georgia is next at 41 percent, followed by Arkansas at 41 percent, and Alabama, South Carolina, and New Mexico at 40 percent.

      My guess is that where Entropy is is among that "taker" lot.

      ...and AC#636494, below us, really wails on this.

      .
      The only major example of where NOT to follow Cali's example I can think of is the "deregulation" of electricity and the resulting rolling blackouts (Enron). [google.com]

      N.B. The City of Los Angeles didn't have that problem.
      (The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is publicly-owned.
      Natural monopolies should have been socialized from Day 1.)

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by vux984 on Sunday February 11 2018, @11:06PM

    by vux984 (5045) on Sunday February 11 2018, @11:06PM (#636477)

    re:
    1. You already agreed 'yes' so we'll move on.

    2. "The workers activities are an integral part of the operation" -- you wrote no, but you are mistaken. The criteria here is not whether or not that particular person is critical to show up, but rather whether that persons activities are integral to the business model. A pizza place without someone to make pizza is not a viable business - making pizza is integral to the operation. A pizza place without someone showing up to repaint the signs is still a pizza place. That is what 'integral' means here. Being integral is doesn't automatically make one an employee by itself, but taken with the other criteria does.

    3. "Detailed control" - Your raising the question of route selection is kind of nonsensical; if I'm tasked with stocking the shelves at walmart, can i get classified as a contractor if I can choose from a few different paths through the store from the shelves to the stock area? The only real autonomy uber drivers have is scheduling availability.

    "In civilized parts of the country, the distinction between employee/contractor is employees have a lot more control imposed on them by the employer."

    This is true, scheduling autonomy is a big one as you noted, but lots of bona fide contractors don't have it and lots of employees do.
    For example if you are a wedding photographer you are not the wedding couples employee, even though they dictate the event timing and locations. On the other hand, my first IT job, I was a bona fide employee with virtually complete schedule autonomy and I could remote work a lot of the time, but I was on payroll. Scheduling autonomy by itself isn't a deciding factor.

    Most governments push towards classifying someone as an employee in grey areas; so if even if its 'questionable' its probably going to land in the 'employee' category.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @11:55PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 11 2018, @11:55PM (#636494)

    California should never be used as a model for anything but failure. Their government is bankrupt, and constantly getting bailouts from everyone else.

    Because you're talking out of your ass.

    California has the highest GDP of any state and, if it were an independent country would have the sixth highest GDP in the world. [wikipedia.org]

    The state of California is also one of the least dependent on Federal funds, either 46th out of 50 [wallethub.com] or 43rd out of 50 [taxfoundation.org], take your pick.

    N.B: I do not live in California or anywhere near it. I am, however, rather fond of facts.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @06:35PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @06:35PM (#636767)

      California is dependent on the rest of the country for water though.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @10:11PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 12 2018, @10:11PM (#636851)

        California is dependent on the rest of the country for water

        You're talking about -Southern- California.

        ...but we still produce manufactured goods for the rest of the nation, are a major handler of imported goods via our ports, and refine a lot of petroleum for the western states.
        We also export electricity to Arizona (where Big Electricity has stymied the uptake of solar capture).

        Yeah, -SoCal- is a net importer of water.
        We started out with engineer William Mulholland getting water from Mono Lake in Kern County (which might be considered part of SoCal).

        ...but there's no particularly good reason for our dependency.

        We do have folks who came here from elsewhere who just HAVE to have a big green lawn.
        The City of Santa Ana, when it did a rework of a major street, put in Astroturf where there had been grass.
        During our extended drought, some folks have taken to using a water-based paint solution to make their brown grass green.
        ...and the natural foliage for this area is succulents (aloe vera, cactus, etc.)--many of which are edible and/or otherwise useful (e.g. medicines).

        Going back several years, you might remember that guy in Orange County who got in a pissing match with the gov't of the City of Orange when he xeriscaped his front lawn. [google.com]
        Eventually, he lost that case.
        The let's-mandate-the-use-of-extravagant-amounts-of-water folks are looking really stupid these day.

        ...and we've got a big giant ocean right next to us.
        The City of Huntington Beach is kicking around the idea of a desalination plant.
        (I don't agree with their choice of a vendor with a troublesome history, but I can easily imagine a point in the near future when the notion of such a facility can be shown to have considerable merit.)

        Some cities are already turning black water (sewage) into potable water.
        Now, they've stopped 1 step short and are only using that to e.g. water golf courses and parks.

        ...and when it rains here, the big concrete ditches that we call rivers are just swollen with water flow--and most of that goes right out to the sea.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Monday February 12 2018, @11:38AM (2 children)

    by TheRaven (270) on Monday February 12 2018, @11:38AM (#636640) Journal

    Their government is bankrupt, and constantly getting bailouts from everyone else.

    You remember the article a couple of days ago about people on the right being more likely to repeat fake news without engaging in any critical thinking? Thanks for providing a case study.

    --
    sudo mod me up