Daily News

View All News

Oregon Supreme Court rules against cab company in IC case

December 14, 2015

The Oregon Supreme Court last week upheld a ruling that certain Broadway Cab LLC taxicab drivers were not independent contractors and held the company liable for unemployment insurance taxes on the drivers’ wages for 2008 and 2009.

The Court Of Appeals previously agreed with an administrative law judge who determined that the drivers were not independent contractors and held Broadway Cab liable for unemployment insurance taxes.

Broadway had argued that the drivers performed services for the general public — the passengers for whom the drivers provided transportation and who paid the drivers for those services — and were not obligated to perform services for Broadway or remunerated by the firm for services rendered.

In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Martha Walters, the Oregon Supreme Court held that the drivers in question performed services for Broadway for remuneration, and that Broadway therefore owes unemployment insurance taxes on their wages. The drivers performed driving services for Broadway, and not solely for their passengers, because the drivers’ services enabled Broadway to fulfill its obligations to the city and other entities with which Broadway had contracts.

The court further held that the drivers were not independent contractors because they were not were not “customarily engaged in an independently established business,” as required by an Oregon statute.  The drivers did not meet that statutory requirement because they did not maintain a business location separate from Broadway’s location; they did not “[provide] contracted services for two or more different persons within a 12-month period” or “routinely [engage] in business advertising"; and they did not have the authority to hire and fire "other persons to provide or to assist in providing the [driving] services.”

Earlier this year, an Oregon official said Uber drivers are employees, not independent contractors.