New Prime INC. vs Dominic Oliveira Case: Analyzing a Business Law Case

The main aim of law in business is to maintain order between different firms, brands, and activities. Laws safeguard the rights of a company, employees, and assist in creating a standard on how this should occur in the firm. This study analyzes to look into a business law case New Prime INC., Petitioner, versus Dominic Oliveira. The incident took place in the Supreme Court of the United States on October 3, 2018, and decided on January 15, 2019 (Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 2018).

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The petitioner, New Prime, is a trucking company where Dominic Oliveira is working as a driver. Oliveira is not an employee but operates under an operational agreement that refers to him as an independent contractor (Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 2018). The executive agreement inculcates that disputes arising out of the parties association should become solved by the arbitrator, including the arguments over the scope of arbitrator’s authority.

A dispute arose, and Oliveira filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that the company he works for denies its drivers' legal wages. According to Oliveira, the firm refers to its drivers as independent contractors, but actually, New Prime treats them as staff and declines to pay the minimum wage. In response, the New Prime Company requested that the court appeal its statutory authority under the Act and compel arbitration according to the terms found in the employer-employee agreements (Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 2018). New Prime resisted that the phrase “contracts of employment" denotes only to contracts that create an employer-employee association.

Oliveira refuted that the court did not have the authority, as section 1 of the Act covers disputes that entail contracts of work to particular transportation workers (Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 2018). Besides, Oliveira viewed that it did not matter if they regarded him as one of the company's staff or an independent contractor. As expected, New Prime disagreed with Oliveira's observation and refuted.

The Court and the First Circuit agreed with Oliveira, the company's driver. Based on the court, it appealed that in such a scenario, it should resolve if the parties contact falls under the Section 1's exclusion or Act's ambit before requesting the ruling's authority to mandate arbitration (Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 2018). Also, the court appealed that section 1 exclusion some contracts to occupation removes from the Acts coverage to even independent contractor's contacts. Hence, the court lacked power under the Act to mandate arbitration. Therefore, the court sided with Oliveira, as there was no dissenting opinion.

The ruling made by the court will affect the business both positively and adversely. Undoubtedly, the company will gain more employee and customer trust in the long run, thus increasing its productivity. An increase in wages will motivate the employees to work extra harder. Negatively, based on the short term, the firm may experience some recession in productivity due to cost maximization (Carpio & Pabon, 2017). Cost maximization will result from an increase in independent contractors' wages.

In this case, the California Trucking Association will be extremely become affected by the ruling made by the court. The impact will be because, similar to New Prime INC., Petitioner, versus Dominic Oliveira case, the association also categorize drivers as independent contractors instead of full employees (Tiffany, 2017). Notably, the California Trucking Association will experience a negative impact due to cost maximization after an increase in drivers' wages. The ruling of the court from Oliveira's case will, to some extent, make the executive team of the California Trucking Association comprehend the implications of the legal decision.

References

Carpio, X. V. D., & Pabon, L. M. (2017). Implications of minimum wage increases on labor market dynamics lessons for emerging economies. The World Bank.

Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612, 584 U.S., 200 L. Ed. 2d 889, (2018). https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8345012189188610773&q=business+contract+disputes&hl=en&as_sdt=2003&as_ylo=2016

Tiffany, H. (2017). Trucking industry’s use of drivers as independent contractors under siege. https://www.trucks.com/2017/01/23/trucking-industry-drivers-independent-contractors/