Court must reconsider rejection of UPS driver hearing policy

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently sent back to a district court for reconsideration the lower court’s initial rejection of UPS’s policy of requiring that its package-car drivers meet Department of Transportation hearing standards that are mandated for drivers of higher-weight vehicles.

The appeals court said that the company’s “reliance on the government safety standard with respect to other vehicles in its fleet should be entitled to some consideration as a safety benchmark” and left it to the lower court to determine whether non-DOT package cars share significant risk characteristics with larger trucks.