On September 22, 2018, a California bill (“SB 1402”) was signed into law that holds a “customer” of a port drayage trucking company liable for violations of California labor and employment laws by said trucking company. A Customer that directly or indirectly hires a port drayage trucking company that has unpaid final judgments could be jointly and severally liable for future judgments relating to any of the following areas:
- Failure to pay truck driver wages;
- Imposing unlawful expenses on employees;
- Failure to remit payroll taxes or to provide worker’s compensation insurance;
- Misclassifying employees as independent contractors; and
- Other labor law violations.
Per SB 1402, “’Customer’ means a business entity, regardless of its form, that engages or uses a port drayage motor carrier to perform port drayage services on the customer’s behalf, whether the customer directly engages or uses a port drayage motor carrier or indirectly engages or uses a port drayage motor carrier through the use of an agent, including, but not limited to, a freight forwarder, motor transportation broker, ocean carrier, or other motor carrier.”
Per the bill, the California Labor Commissioner will publish a list of port drayage companies that have failed to “satisfy” final judgments.
The law will go into effect on January 1, 2019.
The text of SB 1402 can be found here:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1402
