JDSupra, the legal news service, points to a filing in Lawson v. GrubHub that bodes ill for labor marketplaces, such as GrubHub, Uber, Lyft, TaskRabbit and, well, the rest of the on-demand economy.
Last week, the plaintiff’s attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan, submitted a Notice of Supplemental Authority that points to a pending decision by a New Jersey court to apply a restrictive standard to the categorization of workers. If that standard is applied in the GrubHub case, GrubHub will have to treat drivers as employees, as well as confine on-demand markets to specific industries. A disaster for the current model in on-demand economies.
The case, which is in the hands of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, could set the standard for the entire industry. In that case, a new organizing point for the engagement with customers, workers, and government.