Remember the legal saga of owner-operator Dominic Oliveira?
It’s the one that in 2018 made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the nation’s high court ruling in early 2019 in favor of Oliveira and owner-operators like him — those who want to sue their fleet over an employment dispute but are locked into arbitration clauses.
The Supreme Court ruled, in short, that those arbitration clauses between fleets and owner-operators aren’t valid, meaning owner-operators can pursue legal claims against carriers via the court system, rather than having matters decided via third-party arbiters.
That wasn’t the end of Oliveira’s dispute, however. That Supreme Court decision only decided that procedural matter — whether Oliveira can sue in court or whether his case would be forced into arbitration.
Oliveira’s original underlying case, the one that prompted his fleet, Prime Inc., to appeal the case to the Supreme Court, was sent back to lower courts to be heard. Now, that dispute appears to be nearing an end.
Prime has agreed to settle the case with Oliveira and a class of drivers who claim they were misclassified as independent contractors and thus denied certain wages and benefits. Likewise, the fleet is looking to combine another similar lawsuit, Haworth v. New Prime, into the settlement.
Prime has proposed a $28 million settlement agreement, aiming to end the two lawsuits that cover some 26,000 drivers.
