Day on Torts
I received an unsolicited (but not unwanted) email from the Baker Donelson law firm titled "20 Ways Your Independent Contractor Might Be an Employee." The purpose of the email was to warn recipients about ongoing IRS employment tax audits in general and the worker classification issue (are workers employees or independent contractors) in particular.
Well, I looked down the list of issues and it seemed like a pretty good checklist of areas of inquiry in a tort lawsuit to help establish that a so-called independent contractor was in fact an employee and thus the defendant should be vicariously liable for the negligent conduct of that worker. It appears that Baker Donelson may have got the 20-factor checklist from a government publication or from prior cases on the subject but that is a little unclear. That being said, a hat tip to Baker Donelson for sharing this information.
Here are what Baker Donelson calls the "two threshold questions."