Stanford Lawyer Magazine

Spring 2017 Issue 96

May 31, 2017

By: Rick Schmitt

 

In a way the future of the sharing economy, the array of high-tech firms revolutionizing the way Americans take vacations, commute, and contract for personal services, may turn on a legal precedent about vegetables and farm labor. Consider Uber Technologies Inc., the pioneering ride-hailing firm. The company has a policy of treating its drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. That has saved it a ton of money, but has also brought lawsuits from the drivers, who say they’ve been short-changed. In their legal arsenal is a landmark 1989 decision by the California Supreme Court, S. G. Borello & Sons, Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations, which gave migrant farm workers hired to harvest a crop of cucumbers rights as employees.

 

 

Professors Rabia Belt and Nora Freeman Engstrom, JD ’02, with Bryan Casey, JD ’18

 

But it isn’t the only legal issue cropping up. While sharing economy companies are changing the lives and lifestyles of millions, judges, legislators, and regulators are struggling to decide the rules by which they should operate.

 

One challenge is that many of these startups don’t see themselves as traditional companies, but as technology “platforms” where independent buyers and sellers come to transact business—exchanging services, selling their wares, renting out their homes. And this new business model has had widespread effects on a number of legal fronts, including tort liability, municipal regulation, discrimination, and privacy.

 

 https://law.stanford.edu/stanford-lawyer/articles/the-sharing-economy-can-the-law-keep-pace-with-innovation/