Shannon Liss-Riordan, representing plaintiff Raef Lawson, didn't get 20 minutes into her closing argument when US Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley interrupted her to say that her client was untruthful and that her decision would reflect that. He produced a "fabricated resume" and lied on an application to GrubHub that he submitted after filing the lawsuit.
2 comments:
This article doesn’t have a lot to do with theater other than the argument of employee versus contract labor. I find it highly amusing that this is an ongoing argument both in a lot of summer stock companies especially as this next season is due to pick up. There’s always been a very gray line between what is considered an employee versus a contractor. I think that this line is continually blurred most especially in the theater due to convenience on both sides. These however in the end usually come out to benefit the company a little more so. In this article, they say one of the defining factors is how much control the employee or contractor has over their work schedules work environment and such. In the theater world, we do not often have a lot of power over that which should make most things far as an employee or rather a contractor. Something I would love to know more information on and dig deeper into about the ramifications of contracts versus an employee especially in theater world if anything were to change drastically.
This is a major potential landmark case that would affect companies that have changed our world so much. Given the flexibility afforded to the employee in terms of how much he could work, when he could work, where he could work...etc this strikes me as a much more of an independent contractor status. Furthermore, he signed his agreement to be an independent contractor. He lied on his resume’. He was a fraudulent employee. Obviously this case is going to be made into something bigger than just a simple case of a $600 damage. This is going to try and affect Uber, Lyft, etc; however, it would be a shame if this decision came from such a dishonest employee. Honestly, the lack of flexibility that actual hourly or salaried employees have compared to this Grubhub worker really makes me feel that this is more of an independent contractor type of situation.
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