7-Eleven Inc. and some of the company’s Boston-area franchisees will go toe to toe at the First Circuit on Wednesday in a fight over whether Massachusetts law extends employee protections to those who operate the ubiquitous convenience stores.
The franchisees say a lower court wrongly concluded that they don’t perform services for the company and refused to apply Massachusetts’ “ABC test” for determining whether those who run the stores are employees or independent contractors, contradicting a 2022 state high court answer to a certified question earlier in the suit’s judicial odyssey.
The c-store chain urges the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to leave the lower court’s decision in place.
The lawsuit, 7-Eleven’s lawyers said in their appellate brief, is an attempt to turn the state’s independent contractor law “into something it was never intended to be—a tool for business owners, like Plaintiffs, to recover as ‘damages’ three times the value of their business’s operating expenses, including their payroll and the fees they pay for their franchise rights.”
The franchisees, of course, disagree.
The dispute began with a 2017 would-be class action in state court alleging that 7-Eleven misclassified the store operators as independent contractors when they’re really employees entitled to greater protections under state law, such as minimum...
A slew of NYPD officers recounted on Sunday horror stories from their careers in which they say they were falsely accused of sexual misconduct and, despite being exonerated, had the allegations sh...