Mr. Oliveira works under an operating agreement that calls him an independent contractor and contains a mandatory arbitration provision. Mr. Oliveira works under an operating agreement that calls him an independent contractor and contains a mandatory arbitration provision. That word choice may not mean everything, but it does supply further evidence still that Congress used the term "contracts of employment" in a broad sense to capture any contract for the performance of work by workers. 19, 1924, ch. The story is becoming ever more common in the trucking industry: A large trucking company advertises something like “Become a trucker! Contact your carrier for account setup. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Oliveira disagrees. Since our founding in 1970, Prime has been an innovative regional and Over the Road (OTR) trucking company, paving the way for the rest of the trucking industry. contracts of employment of transportation workers." Laws p. 118 ("Should the amount of the attorney's fee be agreed upon in the contract of employment, then such attorney's lien and cause of action against such adverse party shall be for the amount so agreed upon"); Act of Mar. Section 2 provides that the Act applies only when the parties' agreement to arbitrate is set forth as a "written provision in any maritime transaction or a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce." . Prime Inc. is a Trademark by New Prime, Inc., the address on file for this trademark is 2740 N. Mayfair Avenue, Springfield, MO 65803 In a class action lawsuit in federal court, Mr. Oliveira argued that New Prime denies its drivers lawful wages. Oliveira frequently found these costs exceeded his base rate, effectively paying New Prime for his employment. The email address cannot be subscribed. Most relevant for our purposes, §1 warns that "nothing" in the Act "shall apply" to "contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce." . Id., §51:8 (discussing the reference canon). . 332, 337 (1922). . Oliveira opted to be hired as a contractor. See, e.g., Act of Mar. [4], The Court issued its decision on January 15, 2019. Accordingly, his agreement with New Prime falls within §1's exception, the court of appeals was correct that it lacked authority under the Act to order arbitration, and the judgment is. That, we think, holds the key to the case. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 24 (1983). 6-10. L. Q. New Prime Inc., part of mega fleet Prime Inc., has been ordered by the Labor Department to pay a former driver $100,000 in back wages and damages … See, e.g., Watkins v. Sedberry, 261 U. S. 571, 575 (1923) (agreement between trustee and attorney to recover bankrupt's property); Owen v. Dudley & Michener, 217 U. S. 488, 494 (1910) (agreement between Indian tribe and attorneys to pursue claims). This Court's early 20th-century cases used the phrase "contract of employment" to describe work agreements involving independent contractors.2 Many state court cases did the same.3 So did a variety of federal statutes.4 And state statutes too.5 We see here no evidence that a "contract of employment" necessarily signaled a formal employer-employee or master-servant relationship. Gorsuch, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which all other Members joined, except Kavanaugh, J., who took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. "11 And the Erdman Act, a statute enacted to address disruptive railroad strikes at the end of the 19th century, seems to evince an equally broad understanding of "railroad employees."12. Today, the company emphasizes, the law often distinguishes between employees and independent contractors. Id., at 425. . Employees are generally understood as those who work "in the service of another person (the employer) under an express or implied contract of hire, under which the employer has the right to control the details of work performance." ", "Transportation stocks sink after Supreme Court backs trucker who resisted being forced into arbitration after suing over wages", "Supreme Court, missing a justice, considers a trucking case that could rattle the economy", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Prime_Inc._v._Oliveira&oldid=987281848, United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Gorsuch, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan. 10, 1909, ch. NEW PRIME, INC. is a company based out of 2740 NORTH MAYFAIR, SPRINGFIELD, Missouri, United States. . When Congress enacted the Arbitration Act in 1925, the term "contracts of employment" referred to agreements to perform work. This led to the case first hearing in District Court, where the court could not answer the question of whether Oliveira's time as an independent contractor fell within the Section 1 exception of the FAA, and thus ordered a discovery phase to evaluate the nature of his employment. Contact us online or call 1-800-891-7277 to book loads with Prime Brokerage or join the Power Fleet program. . Do you have a... Driver Code. New Prime insisted that any question regarding §1's applicability belonged to the arbitrator alone to resolve, or, assuming the court could address the question, that "contracts of employment" referred only to contracts that establish an employer-employee relationship and not to contracts with independent contractors. Those agreements also instruct that any disputes arising out of the parties' relationship should be resolved by an arbitrator--even disputes over the scope of the arbitrator's authority. Notice Congress didn't use the word "employees" or "servants," the natural choices if the term "contracts of employment" addressed them alone. . A person's regular occupation or business; a trade or profession"); 3 The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia 1904 (1914) (defining "employment" as "[w]ork or business of any kind"); W. Harris, Webster's New International Dictionary 718 (1st ed. Id., at 70. So under any account of the parties' agreement in this case, the court held, it lacked authority under the Act to order arbitration. Suggestively, at least one recently published law dictionary defines the word "employment" to mean "the relationship between master and servant." New Prime serves customers in the United States. 17-340 Argued: October 3, 2018 Decided: January 15, 2019. See, e.g., Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Co. of America, 350 U. S. 198, 201-202. Please contact Prime Support at 417-521-3148 if you have questions. The Court accepted the case for its 2018 term, and oral hearing was held on October 3, 2018; this date was prior to Brett Kavanaugh's appointment to the court, so he took no part in any of the case's proceedings. 424. Petitioner New Prime Inc. is an interstate trucking company, and respondent Dominic Oliveira is one of its drivers. In 2015, Oliveira started a class-action lawsuit against New Prime, representing all other contracted drivers they had hired, arguing the company was not paying fair wages to its independent contractors. Recall that the Act excludes from its coverage "contracts of employment of . The First Circuit held in favor of Oliveira in two parts, first by asserting that it was the court's responsibility to determine if Section 1's exceptions applied in this case, and second that Oliveira, even as an independent contractor, fell within these exceptions, which would allow the class-action suit to proceed. Ibid. It turns out, too, that the dictionaries of the era consistently afforded the word "employment" a broad construction, broader than may be often found in dictionaries today. A court should determine whether a §1 exclusion applies before ordering arbitration. class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce." See Oxford English Dictionary (3d ed., Mar. The Court ruled unanimously that the exceptions set forth in the FAA, principally for those involved in foreign and interstate commerce such as truck drivers, do apply to contractors as they would to regular employees. 300, §§2, 5, 43 Stat. . The American Trucking Associations, Inc. and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States filed amicus curiae in support of New Prime’s petition for a writ of certiorari. Id., at 70-71. And §1 helps define §2's terms. account of" legislative compromises essential to a law's passage and, in that way, thwart rather than honor "the effectuation of congressional intent." INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 951. But like most laws, this one bears its qualifications. Some observers to the Court feared that the case would weigh in favor of New Prime, as the Court's recent decisions related to arbitration had favored employers, and with Kavanaugh, a conservative, set to join, further cases related to arbitration would continue to weigh in favor of employers. ."). We acknowledged as much some time ago, explaining that, before invoking the severability principle, a court should "determine[ ] that the contract in question is within the coverage of the Arbitration Act." . at the time Congress enacted the statute.' 3 J. Murray, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles 129 (1891). . New Prime appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, believing that the question of Section 1 of the FAA applicability should be decided by the arbitrator and not the court system. Jul 24 2018: Brief amicus curiae of Public Citizen, Inc. filed. The Act also specified that the railroads would "be responsible for the acts and defaults of such employees in the same manner and to the same extent as if . . . See, e.g., 1 T. Conyngton, Business Law: A Working Manual of Every-day Law 302-303 (2d ed. And, the Act's severability principle applies only if the parties' arbitration agreement appears in a contract that falls within the field §§1 and 2 describe. But this proves little. . In a unanimous decision, the Court upheld the findings of the First Circuit, affirming that judgment of whether Section 1 exceptions applied or not was a role for the courts and not arbitration, and that within Oliveira's case, the written intent of the FAA covered any type of employer-employee agreement, including the independent contractor construct, and thus Oliveira was not bound by the FAA to seek arbitration. Id., at 309. By respecting the qualifications of §1 today, we "respect the limits up to which Congress was prepared" to go when adopting the Arbitration Act. Whether a dispute over applicability of the FAA’s Section 1 exemption is an arbitrability issue that must be resolved in arbitration pursuant to a valid delegation clause. Pp. Black's Law Dictionary 421 (2d ed. . What's the evidence to support this conclusion? They agree, too, that all this came to pass in part because the word "employee" didn't suffer from the same "historical baggage" of the older common law term "servant," and because it proved useful when drafting legislation to regulate burgeoning industries and their labor forces in the early 20th century.7 The parties even agree that the development of the term "employee" may have come to influence and narrow our understanding of the word "employment" in comparatively recent years and may be why today it might signify to some a "relationship between master and servant."8. . . 2012). But if the term also encompasses contracts that require an independent contractor to perform work, then the exception takes hold and a court lacks authority under the Act to order arbitration, exactly as Mr. Oliveira argues. ASHandle: AS22038 OrgID: PRIME-60 ASName: PRIME-SGF1 ASNumber: 22038 RegDate: 2011-10-20 Updated: 2012-03-02 Source: ARIN OrgID: PRIME-60 OrgName: New Prime, Inc. CanAllocate: Street: 2740 N. Mayfair City: Springfield State/Prov: MO Country: US PostalCode: 65803 RegDate: 2008-04-22 Updated: 2019-09-04 OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE2955-ARIN … NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. And in Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U. S. 1, 10-11, and n. 5 (1984), we noted that "the enforceability of arbitration provisions" under §§3 and 4 depends on whether those provisions are "part of a written maritime contract or a contract 'evidencing a transaction involving commerce' " under §2--which, in turn, depends on the application of §1's exception for certain "contracts of employment.". . Recall that §1 excludes from the Act's compass "contracts of employment of . [3] It was the first of three cases the Court agreed to hear during the term related to arbitration. to Brief for Respondent 13a (citing additional examples). In particular, §1 carves out from the Act's coverage "contracts of employment of . NEW PRIME INC., PETITIONER v. DOMINIC OLIVEIRA. New Prime argues that, by 1925, the words "employee" and "independent contractor" had already assumed these distinct meanings.6 And given that, the company contends, the phrase "contracts of employment" should be understood to refer only to relationships between employers and employees. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. As these illustrations suggest, sometimes, "[w]ords in statutes can enlarge or contract their scope as other changes, in law or in the world, require their application to new instances or make old applications anachronistic." 88, §1, 1924 Va. Acts ch. In Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Co. of America, 350 U. S. 198, 201-202 (1956), we recognized that "Sections 1, 2, and 3 [and 4] are integral parts of a whole. Because the Act's term "contract of employment" refers to any agreement to perform work, Mr. Oliveira's agreement with New Prime falls within §1's exception. New Prime, Inc., Case No. Either way, his agreement to drive trucks for New Prime qualifies as a "contract[ ] of employment of . . And that qualification has sparked these questions: When a contract delegates questions of arbitrability to an arbitrator, must a court leave disputes over the application of §1's exception for the arbitrator to resolve? But this authority doesn't extend to all private contracts, no matter how emphatically they may express a preference for arbitration. 982, 3 R. L. B. In 1922, for example, the Railroad Labor Board interpreted the word "employee" in the Transportation Act of 1920 to refer to anyone "engaged in the customary work directly contributory to the operation of the railroads. . Eventually, of course, a dispute did arise. 2014); see also P. Durkin, Release Notes: The Changes in Empathy, Employ, and Empire (Mar. We recommend using Dominic Oliveira completed an apprenticeship program offered by New Prime Inc. (Prime), an interstate trucking company. at the time Congress enacted the statute.' The service (of a person). Petitioner New Prime Inc. is an interstate trucking company, and respondent Dominic Oliveira is one of its drivers. 4, §4, 1909 Okla. Sess. Nothing in our holding on this score should come as a surprise. 1910). Consequently, . Google Chrome, "[W]ords generally should be 'interpreted as taking their ordinary . Accident Comm'n, 107 Ore. 304, 311-312, 215 P. 582, 583, 585 (1923); N. Dosker, Manual of Compensation Law: State and Federal 8 (1917). And because Mr. Oliveira is, in fact as well as form, an independent contractor, the company argued, §1's exception doesn't apply; the rest of the statute does; and the district court was (once again) required to order arbitration. Discussion topics at Prime Inc Work from home Explore work from home during COVID-19, remote work support and work-life balance. NEW PRIME INC. v. OLIVEIRA(2019) No. But, Mr. Oliveira alleged, in reality New Prime treats them as employees and fails to pay the statutorily due minimum wage. All rights reserved. Even if the statute doesn't supply judges with the power to compel arbitration in this case, the company says we should order it anyway because courts always enjoy the inherent authority to stay litigation in favor of an alternative dispute resolution mechanism of the parties' choosing. The Court ruled unanimously that the exceptions set forth in the FAA, principally for those involved in foreign and interstate commerce such as truck drivers, do apply to contractors as they would to regular employees. As a result, most people then would have understood §1 to exclude not only agreements between employers and employees but also agreements that require independent contractors to perform work. interstate commerce." Petitioner New Prime, Inc. (“New Prime”) is a national trucking company that recruits and trains new drivers through an apprenticeship program. Because courts across the country have disagreed on the answers to these questions, we took this case to resolve them. Act of June 1, 1898, ch. Given the extraordinary breadth of the parties' arbitration agreement, the company insisted that any question about §1's application belonged for the arbitrator alone to resolve. In response to Mr. Oliveira's complaint, New Prime asked the court to invoke its statutory authority under the Act and compel arbitration according to the terms found in the parties' agreements. But this argument rests on a precarious premise. We've long stressed the significance of the statute's sequencing. 197, 200, 122 A. See Carlson, Why the Law Still Can't Tell an Employee When It Sees One and How It Ought To Stop Trying, 22 Berkeley J. Emp. New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira, 586 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the classification of employees hired as contractors in relation to exceptions to arbitration set forth in the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). " Carlson, 22 Berkeley J. Emp. Co., 388 U. S. 395, 402 (1967). meaning . ‎A time saving tool to help keep you connected and informed. . Happily, everyone before us agrees that Mr. Oliveira qualifies as a "worker[ ] engaged in . Rent-A-Center, West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U. S. 63, 68-69 (2010). Given the statute's terms and sequencing, we agree with the First Circuit that a court should decide for itself whether §1's "contracts of employment" exclusion applies before ordering arbitration. Each emphasized the central role that independent contractors play in the modern economy, and the trucking industry in particular. Unless a party specifically challenges the validity of the agreement to arbitrate, both sides may be required to take all their disputes--including disputes about the validity of their broader contract--to arbitration. At the time of the Act's passage, shipboard surgeons who tended injured sailors were considered "seamen" though they likely served in an independent contractor capacity.10 Even the term "railroad employees" may have swept more broadly at the time of the Act's passage than might seem obvious today. Why this very particular qualification? Black's Law Dictionary, at 639. The courts below did not address it and we granted certiorari only to resolve existing confusion about the application of the Arbitration Act, not to explore other potential avenues for reaching a destination it does not. . Board of Governors, FRS v. Dimension Financial Corp., 474 U. S. 361, 374 (1986). But a delegation clause is merely a specialized type of arbitration agreement and is enforceable under §§3 and 4 only if it appears in a contract consistent with §2 that does not trigger §1's exception. . This page was last edited on 6 November 2020, at 01:13. If two parties agree to arbitrate future disputes between them and one side later seeks to evade the deal, §§3 and 4 of the Act often require a court to stay litigation and compel arbitration "accord[ing to] the terms" of the parties' agreement. When he was hired, he first had to drive 10,000 miles as an unpaid "trainee", followed by 30,000 miles as an "apprentice" working at US$4 an hour. . Nor has anyone suggested any other appropriate reason that might allow us to depart from the original meaning of the statute at hand. 2. a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce" consistent with §2. & Lab. The company reminds us that the statute excludes "contracts of employment" for "seamen" and "railroad employees" as well as other transportation workers.
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