(Bloomberg) -- Uber Technologies Inc. may come out ahead by failing to win court approval of a $100 million settlement with drivers.
Even before a San Francisco federal judge rejected the deal on Thursday, the drivers’ lawyer said the ride-hailing giant may have the upper hand to walk away from further negotiations because an appeals court hinted that it might overrule a key pretrial ruling in the fight over whether drivers must be treated as employees.
|Calif. case & Uber's gig-economy model
If the three-year-old lawsuit collapses, the world’s most valuable technology startup would escape without any significant changes to its business model or financial sacrifice while keeping hundreds of thousands of California and Massachusetts drivers classified as independent contractors.
While Uber faces driver lawsuits elsewhere, as well as challenges to its pricing and business practices, the California case was seen as the most likely to upend its gig-economy workforce model because of the state’s relatively tough labor laws.
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