{"id":546,"date":"2015-02-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/events-lindabury.blawgcloud.com\/2015\/02\/new-jersey-supreme-court-adopts-narrow-test-for-determining-independent-contractor-status-under-nj-wage-and-hour-laws.html"},"modified":"2025-02-24T13:36:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T18:36:40","slug":"new-jersey-supreme-court-adopts-narrow-test-for-determining-independent-contractor-status-under-nj-wage-and-hour-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-supreme-court-adopts-narrow-test-for-determining-independent-contractor-status-under-nj-wage-and-hour-laws.html","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey Supreme Court Adopts Narrow Test for Determining Independent Contractor Status Under NJ Wage and Hour Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To avoid the costs inherent in the employer-employee relationship, including employee benefits, workers compensation insurance, employment taxes and other liabilities, many employers secure the services of an independent contractor to avoid these liabilities.\u00a0\u00a0 There are significant risks with this approach, however.\u00a0 An employer who misclassifies a worker as an \u201cindependent contractor\u201d who, in the eyes of the law, is actually serving as an \u201cemployee\u201d faces significant liability for unpaid overtime, employee benefits, payroll taxes, statutory penalties and other consequences.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0To make matters worse, individuals who prevail on claims that they were misclassified as independent contractors are eligible for double damages and attorney fees from the employer.<\/p>\n<p>Both at the state and federal levels, the courts have used various tests &#8211; applied to various legal contexts &#8211; to determine whether a worker should be classified as an independent contractor or an employee in the situation at hand.\u00a0 While some tests result in a greater number of workers qualifying as independent contractors, the far narrower \u201cABC test\u201d is widely regarded as a more difficult test for employers to meet when facing an independent contractor misclassification challenge.<\/p>\n<p>On January 14, 2015 the New Jersey Supreme Court issued its opinion in , resolving some of the uncertainty by declaring the ABC test as the governing test to determine an individual\u2019s employment status for purposes of wage-and-hour and wage-payment disputes under New Jersey law.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-jersey-supreme-court-adopts-narrow-test-for-determining-independent-contractor-status-under-nj-wage-and-hour-laws.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading New Jersey Supreme Court Adopts Narrow Test for Determining Independent Contractor Status Under NJ Wage and Hour Laws\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To avoid the costs inherent in the employer-employee relationship, including employee benefits, workers compensation insurance, employment taxes and other liabilities, many employers secure the services of an independent contractor to avoid these liabilities.\u00a0\u00a0 There are significant risks with this approach, however.\u00a0 An employer who misclassifies a worker as an \u201cindependent contractor\u201d who, in the eyes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,247,291],"tags":[],"coauthors":[296],"class_list":["post-546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-labor-employment-insights","category-gingeleskie"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>New Jersey Supreme Court Adopts Narrow Test for Determining Independent Contractor Status Under NJ Wage and Hour Laws &#8212; February 2, 2015 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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