According to a Transport Topics report on July 29, 2020, New Prime, Inc., has settled two putative class-action lawsuits by its truck drivers for allegedly improper compensation payments and violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as state laws. Transport Topics reports that the settlement, awaiting court approval, will provide a total of $28,000,000 for a potential class of 40,000 drivers, most of whom are independent owner-operators.
On January 15, 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against New Prime, Inc., in its petition to refer to arbitration a class action lawsuit claiming that New Prime improperly paid truck drivers which it had classified as independent contractors, allegedly in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The Court ruled that under the Federal Arbitration Act, an independent owner-operator’s contract is a “contract of employment” of a transportation worker, falling squarely into a class of FAA-exempt agreements. That sent the case back to the First Circuit, and ultimately to the District Court for Massachusetts. A second putative class action suit, Haworth v. New Prime, was filed in 2019, according to Transport Topics. The settlement reportedly resolves both lawsuits.
As reported, New Prime believes its business model, using independent owner-operators in its trucking operations, is “completely lawful and compliant with all regulations.” The settlement, though, was “the right thing to do,” New Prime’s general counsel advised Transport Topics.
The settlement brings to a close the saga of New Prime v. Oliveira, but the issues of arbitration of truck driver employment claims, and waiver of jury trials and class actions, will remain on the foreground for trucking companies and on the dockets of the courts.
A void was left when the Supreme Court of the United States held last year in New Prime v. Oliveira that the Federal Arbitration Act does not apply to a dispute involving a transportation worker’s contract, even if the worker is an independent contractor. The holding rested on an exemption found in Section 1 of the FAA for “contracts of employment” for transportation workers. But that is not the end of the story. The Court left open the use of state arbitration acts for parties and disputes exempted from the federal law. New Jersey stepped up to fill the void in a decision by the state’s Supreme Court in two companion cases, Arafa v. Health Express Corporation and Colon v. Strategic Delivery Solutions, LLC, decided July 14, 2020.
Both plaintiffs are delivery truck drivers whose industries arguably involve interstate commerce. Each signed a contract containing an arbitration clause to be governed “by the FAA.” They sued under wage and hour laws, among others, alleging they were not paid in accordance with those laws. Since the FAA does not apply under New Prime, the plaintiffs argued that there was no meeting of the minds to arbitrate, because the contracts failed to invoke the New Jersey Arbitration Act expressly, as an alternative. The New Jersey Supreme Court disagreed: “[T]he NJAA will apply unless preempted even without being explicitly referenced in an arbitration agreement; no express mention of the NJAA is required to establish a meeting of the minds that it will apply inasmuch as its application is automatic.”
Like the FAA, the New Jersey Arbitration Act provides that a written agreement to arbitrate a dispute shall be valid, irrevocable and enforceable. The two acts operate in the background. The FAA has wide preemptive application to contracts involving international or interstate commerce. But where the FAA does not apply, the New Jersey act steps up “automatically” to fill the void and compel arbitration.
We look forward to more states following New Jersey to apply their own arbitration acts to contracts, such as contracts of employment of transportation workers, to validate and enforce arbitration agreements.
The clause must be reasonably communicated to the other party;
The clause must make the forum selection mandatory, not merely permissive; and
The claims and the parties involved in the lawsuit must be subject to the forum-selection clause.
If these three tests are met, the forum-selection clause will be presumptively enforceable. The opposing party can overcome this presumption only by a sufficiently strong showing that the clause is unreasonable or unjust, or is invalid because of fraud or overreaching. These “public interest” considerations will rarely defeat a forum-selection clause that is presumptively valid.
The operation of these rules was recently demonstrated clearly in Jones v. Povant USA LLC, in a decision by Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the Southern District of New York. Plaintiff Kimberly Moffitt Jones, of California, booked round-trip ocean passage for herself, her two daughters, and her autistic son, from Ushuaia, Argentina, to Antarctica, from December 20, 2018, to January 5, 2019. The total cost for the ocean voyage for the four family members was $125,028, which Ms. Jones paid in advance. Because the autistic son was not able to fly commercially, Ms. Jones chartered a private jet to fly the family, and the son’s therapist, from California to Argentina. She paid $355,000 for the private round-trip air travel. She alleges that she told Povant about this necessary additional cost in order for the family to go on the trip to Antarctica.
Problems and delays arose after the family arrived in Argentina. An issue with the ship’s propeller not only caused delays, but it also resulted in a change of the port of embarkation. Frustrated, Ms. Jones canceled the trip and demanded return of both the ocean fare and the air fare. Povant agreed to return the ocean fare but refused to pay Ms. Jones for the private jet travel from California to Argentina. Ms. Jones brought suit against Povant in federal court in New York, with allegations including intentional and negligent misrepresentation. Povant moved to dismiss based upon the forum-selection clause in the line’s General Terms and Conditions, which states that “only” the courts in Marseilles, France, have jurisdiction to hear any proceeding initiated against the line.
Judge Buchwald analyzed and followed precedent from the Supreme Court and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals governing the enforcement of forum-selection clauses. She first found the existence of the clause was properly communicated to Ms. Jones in the line’s General Terms and Conditions, not only to Ms. Jones but also to her travel agents. The payment of the ocean fare is deemed to signify agreement to the terms and conditions. Second, Judge Buchwald found that the clause was mandatory: only the courts in Marselles, France, would have jurisdiction over disputes arising from the ocean contract. Finally, the court concluded that Ms. Jones’s claims, and the parties to the lawsuit, were subject to the forum-selection clause.
Thus, the forum-selection clause was presumptively enforceable. “If a forum-selection clause is valid, then the only remaining inquiry is whether certain public interest considerations outweigh its enforcement.” Judge Buchwald found that Ms. Jones raised no public interest considerations, such as fraud in the contracting, unavailability of a convenient forum in France, or fundamental unfairness of the application of French law militating against enforcement of the clause.
The court dismissed the New York complaint without prejudice to refiling in France.
With those words the Third Circuit rules that removal to federal court does not cure jurisdictional defects or waive any other defenses available in state court. Danziger & DeLlamo, LLP v. Morgan Verkamp, LLP, (January 15, 2020) is a battle between two law firms over a purported referral fee worth millions of dollars. Morgan Verkamp, an Ohio firm, succeeded in a qui tam action in Pennsylvania federal court. Danziger, a Texas law firm, says it referred the case to Morgan, for an orally agreed referral fee made by telephone between Texas and Ohio.
In a qui tam action a party, called a relator, pursues a claim on behalf of a government, which is deemed the real party in interest. If the government succeeds, the relator receives a share of the award. In this case, Morgan brought the case under the federal False Claims Act, and the U.S. government received a settlement for hundreds of millions of dollars; Morgan received several million dollars in attorneys’ fees. Danziger wants a share of those fees.
The two firms spent a year and a half conducting discovery in a procedure permitted by Pennsylvania state court rules before the filing of a complaint. When Danziger finally filed its complaint, Morgan Verkamp promptly removed the lawsuit to federal court and moved to dismiss, arguing that it was immune from personal jurisdiction in Pennsylvania. The district court agreed and dismissed the complaint. Danziger appealed, arguing that Morgan consented to personal jurisdiction by removing the case to federal court.
The Third Circuit disagreed:
We now adopt this rule. On removal, a defendant brings its defenses with it to federal court. * * * Removal does not cure jurisdictional defects, so defendants can still challenge jurisdiction after removal.
The Third Circuit, which includes New Jersey, now joins the First, Second, and Eighth Circuits. “[T]he federal court takes up where the state court left off.” Nationwide Eng’g & Control Sys., Inc. v. Thomas (8th Cir. 1988). The governing case in the Second Circuit, which includes New York, is Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. v. Peaslee (2nd Cir. 1996) (“Removal does not waive any Rule 12(b) defenses.”). Cantor continues to be cited by the New York federal courts.
We routinely remove cases to federal court in New York and New Jersey, with the confidence that our clients’ defenses to personal jurisdiction will remain intact in the federal forum.
The Graves Amendment, passed in 2005 and codified at 49 U.S.C. § 30106, bars an action for vicarious liability under state law against commercial lessors of motor vehicles involved in motor vehicle accidents, provided that the lessor is free from negligence or criminal wrongdoing. Courts across the country have used the Amendment to protect lessors of tractors, trailers, and intermodal chassis. New York courts have been leaders in protecting rights under the Graves Amendment, especially against New York’s infamous vicarious liability statute, Vehicle and Traffic Law § 388. So, what are the plaintiffs’ lawyers doing to avoid the Graves Amendment?
A double-truck head-on collision, and a downtown New York terrorist attack, illustrate the cleverness of the plaintiffs’ bar. The former is seen in the Illinois federal court case of Favorite v. Sakovsky (August 16, 2019). The terrorist attack is at the center of Grandelli v. City of New York, in Manhattan state court (September 24, 2019). In each horrible case the plaintiffs’ attorneys attempt to increase the pool of financially viable defendants, and to avoid the Graves Amendment.
In Favorite, widow Stephanie Favorite sued the Sakovski estate, BB Wolf, Inc., and Compass Truck Rental and Leasing, the company that leased the Sakovski truck to BB Wolf. She alleged that Compass negligently entrusted the truck to BB Wolf, and should have known that BB Wolf might employ an incompetent driver. Specious as the allegation was, the court denied Compass’s Graves Amendment motion to dismiss because there had been no discovery as yet. A full fact development might support Compass, but the bare complaint did state a cause of action for negligent entrustment.
In Grandelli, Sayfullo Saipov rented a pick-up truck from Home Depot and drove it into a crowd of pedestrians and bicyclists in lower Manhattan, killing eight people. The estate of one victim brought suit against the City and several agencies, and also against Home Depot, alleging that the truck’s lessor negligently entrusted the truck to Saipov, in spite of certain “red flags” from law enforcement publications to be on the lookout for customers who might use a truck to commit terrorist attacks. Home Depot made a Graves Amendment motion to dismiss before conducting any discovery. The court in New York County denied the motion without prejudice, on the incomplete record before it. The court held that the complaint sufficiently stated a case for negligent entrustment, which circumvents the Graves Amendment.
Only one appellate court has considered whether a negligent entrustment claim is barred by the Graves Amendment. In Carton v. GMAC (2010), the Eighth Circuit ruled that vicarious liability claims are barred, but a claim of negligent entrustment, not just negligent maintenance of a leased vehicle, can create an exception to the Graves Amendment. But in this case, the court held plaintiff’s allegations failed to rise to the level of negligent entrustment.
For now, equipment lessors will continue to face negligent entrustment claims, likely unprotected by the Graves Amendment. Lessors should be prepared to present proof of careful practices and procedures to thwart claims of negligent entrustment.
A federal district court in southern California issued a temporary restraining order on New Year’s Eve barring the enforcement of the state’s Assembly Bill 5, set to go into effect on New Year’s Day. AB 5 adopted the “ABC test” to determine if a particular worker is an independent contractor or an employee. The test hits particularly hard on the motor carrier industry, because many trucking companies use legitimate independent contractors – owner-operators – as part of their business model. The court’s decision was compelled largely because under the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (“FAAAA”), states are not to enact or enforce their own laws related to a price, route, or service of any motor carrier regarding transportation of property. The TRO applies only to the motor carrier industry.
The ABC test presumes that a worker is an employee, not an independent contractor. The hiring party can rebut that presumption only if it can establish each of three factors:
An appellate court in New Jersey says that it is. In Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Penske Truck Leasing, Co., CEVA Freight, LLC, and Michael Kika, a recently published decision, the Appellate Division ruled that a self-insured must submit to mandatory arbitration in regard to a PIP reimbursement claim. An arbitrator, not a court, will decide whether the self-insured was negligent and must reimburse the PIP carrier. The decision is important because it is the first such published opinion.
We are often asked in trucking cases whether we can settle a personal injury claim and also have the claimant release the “PIP Subrogation” claim, or the “PIP Lien.” In these states, the answer is “No.”
It really isn’t subrogation, or even a “lien.” And it makes a difference. In both states, the right of the PIP carrier to be reimbursed for its payments of medical expenses and lost earnings arises from statute. The right of reimbursement takes life when the first payment is made. Only the PIP carrier has the right of reimbursement, and only the PIP carrier can release the claim. That right of reimbursement is enforced, generally, through arbitration mandated by statute. In this regard, the PIP reimbursement claim is substantively and procedurally different from a worker’s compensation lien, or a physical damage subrogation claim.
The United States Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the Maritime Law, a unique and large body of federal common law, tempered by any controlling Congressional enactments. So, in recently decided Air & Liquid Sys. Corp. v. DeVries, the Court addressed the scope of the duty of a marine product manufacturer to warn of a potential harm from a part that is required to be incorporated into its product. Here, the part to be added contained asbestos, and it allegedly led to the deaths of two Navy sailors. Their families sued the manufacturer of pumps, blowers, and turbines, but not the manufacturer of the asbestos-containing added part that actually caused the harm. The Supreme Court sided with the families.
This case involves an on-line retailer, E-Commerce China, and the plan of its majority shareholders to buy out the minority owners in a “going private merger.” The company is incorporated in the Cayman Islands. The minority shareholders brought suit in Manhattan federal court, urging that the purchase price was below market value and grossly unfair. The defendants moved to dismiss on the ground of forum non conveniens, claiming that the case should properly be brought in the Cayman Islands, the company’s home of incorporation.
Law Offices of John C. Lane 