Welcome back for another week of What's Next, where we report on the intersection of law and technology. Here's what we've got for you today:

>> What could the next pandemic look like with autonomous vehicles?

>> The San Francisco district attorney predicts more worker misclassification actions against gig economy.

>> Oculus VR and Palmer Lucky could be headed to trial.

Let's chat: Email me at [email protected] and follow me on Twitter at @a_lancaster.

 

Hailing Autonomous Vehicles for the Next Pandemic

Testing for autonomous vehicles, especially in Silicon Valley, has largely ground to a halt amid the pandemic, said John McNelis, partner and co-chair of the autonomous transportation and shared mobility practice at Fenwick & West in Mountain View, California. For some companies, the tests are a two-person job, and for others, continuing to test could pile onto overloaded health care workers in the event of an accident.

But if autonomous vehicles could hit the road during the next global health crisis, daily life during a pandemic could look much different.

For example, a transit system of autonomous vehicles could mean fewer essential workers have to take public transit during a pandemic.

"A lot of our essential workers take mass transit everyday," McNelis said. "That's a problem when you're trying to social distance. Having a full fleet of autonomous vehicles that could transport essential workers to hospitals and grocers will be what will happen if the next pandemic occurs after autonomous vehicles have been widely adopted."

Self-driving vehicles could also transport groceries to elderly and at-risk groups and shuttle patients to and from the doctor, he said.

The vehicles could help get employees back to work sooner, as well, without fear of having to take public transit during the commute. For many people, this has been a traumatic experience, McNelis said.

"There's a question with no known answer of how people are going to react when this is over," he said.

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Gig Economy Under Fire

Third-party delivery company DoorDash is the latest gig economy operation that California officials have targeted for classifying workers as contractors instead of employees.

On Tuesday, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced a lawsuit against DoorDash, The Recorder's Ross Todd reported. Boudin said the SF DA's office will be seeking a court order enjoining the company to designate couriers as employees.

"It shouldn't require that. It shouldn't be necessary. But sadly we know that it is," Boudin said in a press conference announcing the lawsuit.

Gig companies' reliance on independent contractors puts the businesses on precarious footing in the state. After a decision last week, the California Public Utilities Commission now considers Lyft and Uber drivers to be employees, under the ABC test created by the California Supreme Court in Dynamex Operations West v. Superior Court and codified in California's Assembly Bill 5.

The action also follows a similar complaint filed against Uber and Lyft by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and city attorneys in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. In that suit, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is defending Uber, while Lyft tapped Keker, Van Nest & Peters, two law firms that have repped the companies in misclassification suits in the past.

Boudin said he anticipates more misclassification actions against gig economy companies, noting that his office's lawsuit against DoorDash is the "first of many."

Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus VR Inc. and creator of the Oculus Rift, demonstrates the new Oculus Rift headset during the "Step Into The Rift" event in San Francisco, California, on June 11, 2015. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
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A New Reality for the Oculus VR Case

Oculus VR and its founder Palmer Luckey are likely headed to court over allegations the company is formed around stolen tech, after a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

It's been a long road for Oculus and Total Recall Technologies, which filed the suit against the VR company in 2015. Total Recall Technologies, a partnership between inventors Ron Igra and Thomas Seidl aimed at developing a 3D immersive reality headset, alleged that they entered a contract with Luckey to commercialize a VR headset. But Total Recall Technologies claims Luckey passed off the Oculus Rift as his own design, formed the Oculus VR company and sold it to Facebook, breaching their contract.

In its second appeal to the Ninth Circuit, Total Recall Technologies asked the court to reverse a summary judgement order that found it did not have the authority to sue, since Igra brought the suit without Seidl's sign-off, in violation of a partnership agreement.

In an unpublished memo decision, the Ninth Circuit found that Total Recall Technologies solved the authority problem by removing Seidl from the partnership.

"The district court abused its discretion by requiring Thomas Seidl to consent to the action as a condition of ratification," wrote Ninth Circuit Judges J. Clifford Wallace and Marsha Berzon and U.S. District Judge Terrence Berg of the Eastern District of Michigan sitting by designation. "By imposing that condition, the district court compelled Total Recall to keep its same structure and ownership to continue prosecuting the action."

Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan's Robert Stone and Brian Cannon represented Total Recall Technologies in the appeal. Cooley and Mayer Brown defended Luckey and Oculus.

Cannon said his team sees trial as the next step in the five-year long case. It's really an underdog story, he said.

"This is a situation of a Facebook subsidiary being built on the ideas and designs of another," he said. "Our clients are entrepreneurs and inventors, but they are obviously not as big as Facebook. So our clients are seeking to go against the biggest player in the field, to some degree, and we've really had to fight to make this happen."

 

On the Radar

'We Have to Demand More': Kirkland Palo Alto Associate Speaks Out About Race and Big Law "Anyone with a basic knowledge of the social, cultural, and historical context of the United States and the nature of human psychology can quickly understand how a junior black associate verbalizing concerns and offering valid criticisms (even asking pointed questions) can lead to undesirable outcomes for said black associate," wrote Kirkland & Ellis associate Lauren Skerrett. "There's no safe and polite way for the black junior associate to express frustrations to white leadership." Read more from Vivia Chen here.

Lex Machina Releases App to Track COVID-19′s Litigation Impact For further insights, COVID app users can view how many trials, judgment rulings and complaints mention COVID-19. All of the described elements are available to the public and current Legal Analytics customers for free, said Carla Rydhom, Lex Machina director of product management. Read more from Victoria Hudgins here.

German Publishers Drop Suit Against Google Over News Article Snippets "VG Media asserts rights. If Google accepts the claim, we will enter into a license agreement on reasonable terms. If Google denies our claims and does not negotiate, we will sue," a VG Media spokesman said. Read more from Eva von Schaper here.

LegalZoom Lures Away The Honest Company's General Counsel "The LegalZoom mission is really consistent with a core passion of mine. This democratization of law, driving of transparency, making the complex more simple is something that's consistent with my core value system and it's something that drives me," said Nicole Miller, the newly appointed general counsel of LegalZoom. Read more from Phillip Bantz here.

Thanks for reading. We will be back next week with more What's Next. Stay safe and healthy, everyone.