On-demand economy's legal foe told to stop filing cases in California

By Kashmir Hill  |  October 14, 2015 | 3:43pm
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Shannon Liss-Riordan, the Boston lawyer who has been doggedly suing Uber and the rest of the on-demand economy for treating their workers like contractors instead of employees, was recently told to go back to Massachusetts by a California judge. After she filed a lawsuit against Washio, lawyers for the on-demand laundry service start-up argued that she had “established a California legal practice without a California license,” given that she has, according to the lawyers, 11 different ongoing class actions going in the state against on-demand start-ups, from Uber and Lyft to Doordash and Grubhub.

Via the Recorder:

On Friday, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn denied Boston-based Liss-Riordan’s application for pro hac vice admission, finding she is “regularly engaged in substantial legal activities in California and thus not eligible.”

Liss-Riordan took the ruling in stride. In February, she plans to take the California bar exam.

“I am flattered that one of these companies would be so concerned about having me on the case that they would fight my pro hac vice admission (which is rather routinely granted),” she told me by email. “But if they hoped to deter me, it didn’t work, because I’ll just get admitted now in California.”

So that legal maneuver seems to have back-fired. Liss-Riordan said her firm, Lichten & Liss-Riordan, now plans to set up a California office.

 
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