DoorDash owes Washington $14.5 million for its delivery Dashers

Industrial insurance is Washington’s version of workers’ compensation. Under the Industrial Insurance Act, employers pay quarterly premiums for anyone who counts as a “worker.” State law defines a worker as someone under a contract “the essence of which is his or her personal labor.” That phrase drove the case. 

Both sides agreed the Dashers were independent contractors. Below, a judge, the Board, and a superior court all found the essence of the work was personal labor – so the Dashers were covered. DoorDash had argued the opposite: that the essence was the vehicle, not the person. Because Dashers “had to, of necessity, utilize a motorized vehicle,” the company said their work fell outside the definition. 

On appeal, DoorDash pressed a different point. It pointed to an old state board decision involving phone-book delivery drivers and argued that ruling legally bound the Department this time, under a doctrine called collateral estoppel – the idea that a settled issue cannot be relitigated. 

The court rejected that. The controlling facts were not identical, it held: the phone-book case involved 72 drivers with three days to drop off books, a world away from tens of thousands of Dashers racing meal orders under tight deadlines. And the law had evolved, with later rulings treating personal cars as ordinary tools rather than specialized machinery. So collateral estoppel did not apply, and the court affirmed. 

For HR and workforce leaders, the signal is clear. Labeling workers as independent contractors does not settle whether a company owes workers’ compensation-style coverage. And a favorable ruling from years back may not hold as courts update how they read old exemptions. The decision is a published opinion, so it can be cited as precedent in future Washington cases.