“Placido Domingo’s pretty great, but I also love Pavarotti.”

In Hampshire, England, there is a veterinarian who sings opera to cows.

Now if your spidey-sense is as tingly as mine, you’ll immediately realize there is something wrong with this picture. It’s obvious, right? It should be an opera singer who sings opera to cows, not a veterinarian. Vet school does not include the proper classical training.

While this Hampshire vet has apparently not realized he is out of his lane, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week did acknowledge it was operating out of its lane in a major case involving independent contractors. The Ninth Circuit is withdrawing a major decision it released in May 2019 and sending that issue to the California Supreme Court instead.

In May, we wrote about the ruling by the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that’s being withdrawn. In that case, the Ninth Circuit ruled that California’s ABC Test (the Dynamex Test) for deciding the Independent Contractor vs. Employee question would apply retroactively. (You can read my seething critique of that ruling, Vazquez v. Jan-Pro, here.)

The Dynamex decision is the one in which the California Supreme Court made up an ABC Test as the new standard for determining whether someone is a contractor or an employee under California’s wage and hour laws (claims of overtime, minimum wage, meal and rest breaks, etc.). The ramifications are enormous for California businesses.

Now back to the May 2019 Vazquez ruling. In that case, the Ninth Circuit ruled that California businesses should have been applying the ABC Test that was made up in Dynamex, even though that test did not yet exist. Seems pretty unfair, doesn’t it? Very unfair.

Last week, the Ninth Circuit withdrew its ruling in the May 2019 Vazquez case. This is half good news, not all good news.

The Ninth Circuit didn’t concded that its May 2019 decision was wrong (even though it was, heh heh). Rather, the Ninth Circuit decided that — like a veterinarian singing opera to cows — it had been operating out of its lane. The Ninth Circuit now says that the California Supreme Court — not the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals  —  should be the one to decide whether the ABC Test applies retroactively.

The California Supreme Court case is definitely one to watch. Industry groups from around the country are likely to weigh in. Many will file amicus briefs (non-party “friend of the court” memos) to try to persuade the court that retroactivity would be unfair and would have significant negative effects on California businesses and the state’s economy.

For now, the question of whether the Dynamex ABC Test applies retroactively is again unresolved. That means there is a period of a few years extending back from April 2018 in which nobody knows what the test is for determining whether someone was then an employee or an independent contractor under California’s wage and hour laws.

That’s important because the are a lot of lawsuits alleging that independent contractors are misclassified. Some have been decided, some have not. Could some cases that were already decided be reopened?

We’ll keep an eye on this case as it makes its way through the California Supreme Court. We’ll also be watching for new developments among bovine opera aficionados. I want to know whether the cows think this veterinarian singer is any good.

© 2019 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

Need training on avoiding independent contractor misclassification claims? Hey, I do that!