Vazquez v. Jan-Pro Franchising Int’l, 2019 WL 1945001 (9^th Cir. 2019)

Last year, the California Supreme Court in Dynamex Ops. W. Inc. v. Superior Court, 4 Cal. 5^th 903 (2018), adopted the so-called “ABC test” for determining whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor and in so doing made it much more difficult for a hirer to properly classify a worker as an independent contractor. The ABC test requires the hirer to prove that the worker is: (A) free from the control and direction of the hirer; (B) performing work outside of the usual course of the hirer’s business; and (C) customarily engaged in an independently established trade of the same nature as the work performed. In Vazquez, the Ninth Circuit held that Dynamex should be applied retroactively to hiring arrangements that existed prior to issuance of the Dynamex opinion.