Another state has gone after FedEx Ground for its use of independent contractors.

Yesterday the Massachusetts Attorney General fined the company $190,000 on charges that included FedEx Ground misclassifying 13 drivers as independent contractors.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley also cited the company for failing to provide the 13 drivers with proper pay stubs, not paying overtime to some of them, not withholding state taxes from their pay and failing to provide workers' compensation. She also ordered the company to pay restitution to the 13 drivers.

The company also has come under fire in California for its single route independent drivers and is in the process of changing its system so there are only contractors who operate multiple routes and have to hire employees to drive for them.

In Massachusetts Ms. Coakley's office also is investigation whether the same problems exist with the rest of the more than 400 drivers who work for the company there.

FedEx Ground plans to appeal the penalties.

Perry Colosimo, a spokesman for the company, said that FedEx has been operating in Massachusetts for 22 years and that the company has cooperated with the state attorney general's office since 2005, "And no concerns were ever raised about our business practices."

Ms. Coakley's office said the independent contractor law in Massachusetts states that people are considered employees unless they meet three tests: first that the worker is not controlled or directed by the company; second that the work is outside of the usual course of the company's business; and that the person is customarily engaged in an independent trade or profession that is of the same nature as the service he or she is performing. By those rules, a plumber working for FedEx Ground fixing a faucet would be an independent contractor.

In a release from Ms. Coakley's office she said her investigators found when it came to the independent drivers, FedEx Ground was in violation of all three prongs of that law.

The attorney general said her office started its investigation after receiving a complaint from a driver this past summer.

Harry Pierre, a spokesman for Ms. Coakley, said the attorney general was investigating whether the rest of the drivers in the state had been hired in violation of the law.

"The independent contractors test in Massachusetts is the most restrictive in the country," Mr. Colosimo said. "Working for yourself or owning your own business should not be against the law in Massachusetts or any other state in the U.S."

In the California case, that state's Supreme Court recently upheld a lower court decision that the drivers should have been considered employees. The case is now on its way back to the trial court to sort out how much the company owes 209 drivers for expenses such as gasoline. The expenses, combined with the original $5.3 million judgement against the company plus interest, could cost Moon-based FedEx Ground more than $12 million.

The company also is the defendant in a multistate federal class-action case about its use of independent contractors. That action has been consolidated into one case that is being considered in the U.S. District Court in South Bend, Ind.