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April 12, 2020 07:34 am

How a Corporation Suddenly Faced 'Flood' of Lawsuits From Thousands of Gig Workers

Long-time Slashdot reader PalmAndy shared the New York Times profile of two pioneers in "mass arbitration." One Silicon Valley founder created FairShake, an automated system to help consumers launch hundreds of arbitration cases against corporations like Comcast and AT&T. And then there's attorney Travis Lenkner (and his firm Keller Lenkner), who says most companies never thought consumers would actually use arbitration. "We don't see it that way."Keller Lenkner's first wave of cases have focused on workers in the gig economy. [Alternate version of article]Many of these workers, particularly at food delivery companies, have been thrust onto the front line of the coronavirus crisis by ferrying food and supplies to housebound consumers, while risking getting sick. A large number of their employers require these workers to sign arbitration clauses... One of the firm's latest showdowns is with DoorDash, a leading food delivery app in the United States. It shows the traction that mass arbitration is gaining with judges and the lengths that companies will go trying to stop it. It began last summer when Keller Lenkner filed more than 6,000 arbitration claims on behalf of couriers for DoorDash, known as "dashers...." The cases were taken to the American Arbitration Association, an entity that provides the judges and sets up the hearings for such disputes. DoorDash specified in its contracts with its roughly 700,000 dashers that they had to use the association when filing an arbitration claim. The company also told the dashers that it would pay any fees that the association required to start the legal process. Then DoorDash got the bill for the 6,000 claims — more than $9 million. DoorDash balked, arguing in court that it couldn't be sure that all of the claimants were legitimate dashers. The American Arbitration Association said the company had to pay anyway. It refused, and the claims were essentially dead... But a federal judge in San Francisco wasn't willing to go along with it. The judge, William Alsup, ordered DoorDash in February to proceed with the American Arbitration Association cases and pay the fees... "Your law firm and all the defense law firms have tried for 30 years to keep plaintiffs out of court," the judge told DoorDash's lawyers at the Gibson Dunn firm late last year. "And so finally someone says, 'OK, we'll take you to arbitration,' and suddenly it's not in your interest anymore. Now you're wiggling around, trying to find some way to squirm out of your agreement." "There is a lot of poetic justice here," the judge added.

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