B&B attorney Michaela May was quoted in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly’s November 22, 2021 edition concerning the recent decision in Cunningham v. Lyft, in which the First Circuit held that Lyft drivers should be compelled to arbitrate their wage-and-hour claims against the ride-sharing app. The First Circuit had reversed an order by Judge Indira Talwani, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, who had held that the drivers were “transportation workers” engaged in interstate commerce and therefore were exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act. The First Circuit found that Lyft’s drivers were not engaged in interstate commerce and therefore that the FAA required them to submit to arbitration.
“Nothing in Lyft’s agreement with people being driven says they can’t be driven across state lines,” Attorney May said. “How do you decide when the driving across state lines is too much or too little? Lyft, if it wanted to, could say they only want to drive intrastate, but they haven’t done that.”
Earlier this year, Attorney May and B&B Partner Eric R. LeBlanc successfully argued before the Business Litigation Session of the Suffolk Superior Court that GrubHub drivers were indeed exempt transportation workers, although on different grounds.
