Donovan v. DialAmerica Marketing, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
757 F.2d 1376 (3d Cir. 1985)
DialAmerica (defendant), a telephone-marketing firm, used home-based "researchers" who looked up subscribers' phone numbers on cards they picked up and returned within a set format, setting their own hours with no direct investment, and used "distributors" who recruited and paid the researchers, bore business expenses, negotiated researcher pay, and operated with little DialAmerica oversight. The Secretary of Labor (plaintiff) sued DialAmerica for FLSA violations, and the district court held neither researchers nor distributors were DialAmerica employees.
Whether the fact that an individual works from home is dispositive of whether that individual is an employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act.