Background
Approximately 26,500 independent contractors known as Dashers completed about 8.9 million DoorDash deliveries in Washington between July 2017 and December 2019. Dashers used DoorDash’s smartphone application to accept delivery opportunities, receive pickup and delivery information, and confirm completed deliveries. Although most deliveries were made by car or truck, Dashers also used bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, electric bicycles, or walked.
The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries audited DoorDash and assessed roughly $14.5 million in industrial-insurance premiums and penalties. The parties stipulated that Dashers were independent contractors, leaving the issue of whether the essence of their contracts was personal labor under RCW 51.08.180(1). An industrial appeals judge found that it was and affirmed the assessments. The Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals adopted that ruling, and the superior court affirmed.
On appeal, DoorDash argued that collateral estoppel barred the Department from asserting that Dashers were covered workers because the Board had previously ruled in In re Yellow Book Sales & Distribution Co. that independent contractors delivering phone books were not covered when they necessarily supplied motor vehicles.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that DoorDash could not establish the first requirement for collateral estoppel because the issue, controlling facts, and applicable legal rules were not identical to those in Yellow Book. The earlier case involved 72 contractors who had three days to distribute phone books, while DoorDash’s operation involved more than 26,000 Dashers making millions of time-sensitive deliveries of meals, beverages, and other items under service and customer-satisfaction expectations.
The court also noted that not every Dasher used a motor vehicle and that Washington law concerning contractors’ use of personal vehicles had developed after Yellow Book. Later decisions treated ordinary passenger vehicles as analogous to ordinary tools rather than the specialized machinery addressed by the Washington Supreme Court’s exception in White v. Department of Labor & Industries. Because the DoorDash facts more closely resembled those later courier cases, collateral estoppel did not preclude the conclusion that the essence of the Dashers’ contracts was their personal labor.
Key Takeaways
- A prior administrative ruling has preclusive effect only when the issue, controlling facts, and applicable legal rules are identical.
- Dashers’ work differed materially from the phone-book deliveries addressed in Yellow Book, including its scale, deadlines, service requirements, and available transportation methods.
- Supplying an ordinary personal vehicle does not necessarily remove an independent contractor from the Industrial Insurance Act’s definition of a covered worker.
Why It Matters
The decision preserves a substantial industrial-insurance assessment against DoorDash and confirms that classifying gig workers as independent contractors does not by itself exempt a company from Washington’s industrial-insurance obligations. The statutory inquiry remains whether the essence of the independent contract is the worker’s personal labor.
It also limits employers’ ability to rely on older agency decisions involving superficially similar delivery work. Courts will examine the particular services, equipment, working conditions, and subsequent development of the law before giving an administrative ruling preclusive effect.