GEICO Agents Revive Worker Misclassification, Benefits Lawsuit

GEICO must face revived litigation by insurance agents who say they were wrongly classified as independent contractors and blocked from receiving full retirement, health, and life insurance benefits.

GEICO had won a district court’s dismissal by producing benefit plan documents showing that the agents weren’t eligible for participation in the plans. But the agents should have been allowed to conduct discovery into whether those were the “full set of relevant, governing plan documents,” the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said in a Monday opinion reviving the case.

The agents questioned the validity of GEICO’s documents by pointing ...