The Franchise Memorandum

A Virginia federal court has concluded that a lawn care franchisor was not a joint employer of a franchisee's employee. Wright v. Mountain View Lawn Care, LLC, 2016 WL 1060341 (W.D. Va. Mar. 11, 2016). The employee had sued Mountain View Lawn Care (the franchisee) and U.S. Lawns (the franchisor) for gender discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. She argued that U.S. Lawns was a joint employer because she wore a U.S. Lawns uniform, drove a truck with a U.S. Lawns logo, and received correspondence from her employer on U.S. Lawns letterhead.

The court disagreed, holding that those facts were not indicative of joint employment under Fourth Circuit precedent. Rather, the court reasoned that the evidence did not suggest U.S. Lawns exerted any control over the plaintiff's employment, and, thus, U.S. Lawns could not be held liable under Title VII pursuant to the joint employment doctrine. The court further held U.S. Lawns and Mountain View were not liable under a single, integrated theory of employer liability (under which several companies may be considered so interrelated that they constitute a single employer for purposes of the Title VII statutory scheme), nor was U.S. Lawns liable under an apparent agency theory.

It should be noted that joint employers, for purposes of Title VII liability, are two or more independent entities that share or co-determine matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment and exercise significant control over the same employees. This is separate and distinct from the joint employer standard adopted by the National Labor Relations Board in its Browning-Ferris decision and the standards outlined by the Administrator of the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division under the Fair Labor Standards Act in his Administrator's Interpretation 2916-1.