Louisiana Independent Contractor Agreement Template

Because Louisiana treats the power to end the relationship as a marker of which contract the parties formed. In Hickman v. Southern Pacific Transport Co., 262 La. 102, 119 (1972), the Louisiana Supreme Court said that a right to terminate the relationship without cause, where no term of employment is prescribed, is characteristic of the master and servant or employer and employee relationship and is at the same time antagonistic to the independent contractor relationship. A termination for convenience clause therefore supplies affirmative evidence of employment.

It should set a fixed duration tied to completion of a defined body of work and confine termination to material breach, with the party that walks away early bearing liability for the resulting damages. Hickman describes the contractor arrangement as one whose duration is for a specific time and not subject to termination or discontinuance at the will of either side without a corresponding liability for its breach, so retaining the consequence for early exit is as important as removing the at will language.

For unemployment insurance, yes. La. R.S. 23:1472(12)(E) deems services performed for wages or under any contract of hire to be employment unless the employing unit shows freedom from control both under the contract and in fact, that the service is either outside the usual course of the business or performed outside all of the places of business of the enterprise, and that the individual is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession, or business. The three prongs are conjunctive and the burden is on the employing unit. Other Louisiana laws use different standards.

Easier than in the strictest ABC states, because it is written in the alternative. The service qualifies if it is either outside the usual course of the business or performed outside all of the places of business of the enterprise. A contractor performing work central to a client's business can satisfy the prong by working from the contractor's own premises, which would not help under a single clause version that asks only whether the work is outside the usual course of business.

Not where the work is physical. La. R.S. 23:1021(7) excludes independent contractors from the chapter unless a substantial part of the work time of the independent contractor is spent in manual labor in carrying out the terms of the contract, in which case the independent contractor is expressly covered. The test looks at what the work consists of rather than at the structure of the relationship, so contract drafting cannot defeat it and the sensible response is to require coverage rather than to disclaim it.

The statute says it does not. La. R.S. 23:1021(7) provides that the operation of a truck tractor or truck tractor trailer, including fueling, driving, connecting and disconnecting electrical lines and air hoses, hooking and unhooking trailers, and vehicle inspections, is not manual labor within the meaning of the chapter. That is a legislative carve-out for one occupation and should not be read as a general principle about physical work.

Not generally, and no statute prescribes clause wording for ordinary engagements. The trucking owner operator exclusion does depend on the paper. La. R.S. 23:1021(10) defines an owner operator as a person providing trucking transportation services under written contract, and provides that the owner operator and its drivers are not employees of the carrier or exempt hauler for purposes of the chapter if the owner operator has entered into a written agreement evidencing a relationship in which the owner operator identifies itself as an independent contractor. The statute also excludes a driver who buys equipment from the carrier and leases it back.

The Louisiana Wage Payment Act. La. R.S. 23:631 requires that upon the discharge of any laborer or other employee of any kind whatever, the person employing them pay the amount then due under the terms of employment on or before the next regular payday or no later than fifteen days following the date of discharge, whichever occurs first. Louisiana has no state minimum wage act or overtime act, and La. R.S. 23:642 bars local governments from creating a minimum wage, so the exposure is concentrated in payment timing and penalty wages rather than in wage rates.