
DoorDash to pay $5m to settle class-action lawsuit over independent contractors - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/10/doordash-will-pay-5-million-to-settle-class-action-lawsuit-over-independent-contractors/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
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khazhou
> The named plaintiffs, Marciano and Kissner, will receive $7,500 each and
> Liss-Riordan will get up to $1.25 million. The approximately 33,744 class
> members will receive payment as part of the settlement.

The lawyer gets $1.25 million and the people supposedly impacted get $125
each. I don't what erudite Hacker News-worthy comment to make except... SMH.

~~~
DannyBee
Now, some amounts are egregious, but remember the lawyers are fronting
_literally_ all of the cost here. They don't get it back if they lose, either.
It's kind of like complaining a vc made 500x what you did on an IPO.

I also think hacker news has no concept of what a large lawsuit like this
costs.

if they spend 20 bucks a class member on everything from locating them to
location to answering questions to handling claims, that's 50% of that 1.25
million right there. That doesn't include the _actual_ billable hour cost of
the lawsuit, which for large and complex lawsuits, is ridiculous.

At the same time, hilariously, people here are against class arbitration
(which would pay lawyers dramatically less and claimants more), and pretty
much every other solution. It appears they just think "lawyers should be paid
less, but work harder to get others money". IE they want a system where there
are class actions, and the companies are made to hurt, but nobody else other
than the people in the class make money.

The truth is most of these claims are _worthless entirely_ , and people don't
deserve squat. So $125 is infinitely more than they should have gotten. (i'm
sure someone will come along with no understanding of contract damages and
claim the class members deserve billions)

Are some valuable? Sure. Do some serve a valuable purpose of deterrent? Again,
sure.

But that's like 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 of all class action lawsuits right now.

Check out most class action lawfirm case lists, for example, and see how many
you think are really deserving of more than nominal damages or "please fix
this issue for us". Think about how many of them are the moral equivalent of
bugs you've made in software before that is sold or used by other people. Do
you think you should be paying millions?

Personally, I can't wait for the day when liability for software bugs comes
and everyone here immediately changes their mind and decides most of these
kinds of lawsuits are probably not worth as much as they thought :)

In the meantime, people starting worse-than-useless startups appear to be
deserving of untold billions, and startups doing the same type of thing (eg
making infinite multiples of their workers, who basically make squat) are
a-okay.

BTW, fun fact: Class action lawyers, on average, work much worse hours than
startup engineers.

~~~
linuxkerneldev
> remember the lawyers are fronting literally all of the cost here.

What does that tell us about the way our legal system works?

~~~
Shivetya
that it does work? how else would this work? someone claims a grievance and
needs assistance to settling the dispute. by having this option of a
lawyer(group/individual) front the cost it lets anyone bring a viable dispute
to the table. It shakes out the frivolous from taking up the time of the
courts. It also insures those suing have standing which can be difficult
except when facing corporate entity. Against government a common ploy is to
claim the plaintiffs don't have standing and without a private agency to go to
bat for a group it can be real difficult to move forward?

Government intervention? How would that work? Worse I can imagine all sorts of
ways that it would be abused. Look at how much frivolous suits are in the
system filed by those who don't to put any skin into the game

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pyrophane
> DoorDash has also updated its deactivation policy to ensure that all its
> delivery people retain access to the platform unless they violate the rules
> of engagement. Before, there was no single source of truth when it came to
> deactivating people from the platform. Another change is that DoorDash
> delivery workers will be able to appeal a deactivation if they feel they
> should not have been deactivated from the platform.

> ... the resolution they agreed on was not to change independent contractors
> to employee status, but rather change some policies to improve clarity and
> ensure more rights for the workers.

The article doesn't really give me a good idea of what the original lawsuit
was about. It states that DoorDash was misclassifying "Dashers" as
contractors, but other than the cash, the only thing they mention wrt the
settlement is that DoorDash will change some of its deactivation policies,
presumably because Dashers were being removed from the platform without clear
reason.

So, is this a case where the class action accused DoorDash of misclassifying
employees and then settled for a pile of cash, some minor policy tweaks, and
no fundamental change in the company's contractor practices?

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z92
Seems like it. Basically money grab by lawyers.

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zaatar
DoorDash customer support is _atrocious_ and their own CS representatives know
& acknowledge this. This is also what lead me to deleting DoorDash and
sticking with UberEATS.

If I were upper management at DoorDash, I would be talking to the person that
runs Customer Support to see if they (a) even recognize their CS setup is
terrible (b) are doing something to fix the problem.

Context:
[https://twitter.com/zaatar/status/849968887491776513](https://twitter.com/zaatar/status/849968887491776513)

~~~
gautamnarula
Interesting. I've used several food delivery services (Caviar, GrubHub,
DoorDash, Delivery.com, UberEATS, and a few local ones in my college town),
and DoorDash has been the best customer experience for me.

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AJ007
What if the on-demand platform was decentralized and had no corporate owner?

