employer
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 337 U.S. 783 - Cosmopolitan Shipping Co. v. McAllister · 1949Most cited · 870 citing opinions
the solution of the problem of determining the employer under such a contract depends upon determining whose enterprise the operation of the vessel was. Such words as employer, agent, independent contractor are not decisive. No single phrase can be said to determine the employer. One must look at the venture as a whole. Whose orders controlled the master and the crew? Whose money paid their wages? Who hired the crew? Whose initiative and judgment chose the route and the ports?
How the Supreme Court has restated “employer”
Each Supreme Court definition of “employer,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “employer”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “employer” — 1,224 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 3 definitions, chronological · 1946–1957
- ORIGINAL
if a service is involved which the railroad could perform as a part of its transportation service, it is within the present Acts. It then makes no difference that it is performed by a carrier affiliate rather than by the carrier itself.
when a labor union takes on the role of an employer the Act applies to its operations just as it would to any other employer
labor organization