It was just a matter of time. After the Supreme Court cleared
the way for businesses to use class waivers with their employees
and contractors with the Epic Systems ruling this past
May, many observers expected that the decision would come back to
haunt a class of Uber drivers who wanted to litigate a class action
misclassification case against the ride-sharing company in court.
Earlier today, sure enough, the other shoe dropped.
In a 3-0 ruling, a panel of judges from the 9th Circuit Court
of Appeals barred a class of hundreds of thousands of Uber drivers
from collectively continuing with their litigation against Uber
(
O'Connor v. Uber Technologies). The case has a long
and rocky history, blossoming from a 2013 case filed in California
to a massive multi-state effort encompassing over 385,000 current
and former drivers. In 2016, it looked as if the case was going to
put to bed with
a $100 million settlement, but a district court judge rejected
the deal as not
