By Diana Novak Jones
CHICAGO (Reuters) -Uber is not liable for the sexual assault of a woman who said she was attacked by her driver on a ride she ordered from the app, a California jury said on Tuesday, according to an attorney for the plaintiff.
At the end of a three-week civil trial in San Francisco Superior Court, the jury rejected the woman’s argument that Uber was to blame for her assault.
The case was the first to go to trial out of more than 500 lawsuits consolidated in California state court. There are also more than 2,500 lawsuits making similar claims that have been centralized in a federal court in California.
The woman, who went by Jessica C. at trial, sued in 2021, claiming she was assaulted by an Uber driver in 2016. During the ride, her driver pulled off on a side street, restraining, groping and kissing her, according to her attorneys.
Her lawsuit was chosen to serve as the first “bellwether” for the state court litigation. In litigation with many plaintiffs asserting similar claims, bellwether trials are used to test the claims and establish what they may be worth. Judges may use the outcome of the trial to manage the remaining cases, or lawyers can use them to inform settlement negotiations.
The woman’s attorneys had asked the jury for between $175,000 and $1.2 million in compensatory damages for each year of her life, suggesting larger figures for the years closest to the assault. They did not suggest a number for punitive damages.
SAFETY PRACTICES IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The lawsuits allege Uber was aware it had a problem with drivers assaulting riders, but kept data on how many assaults took place from the public and did not take action to address the issue.
The plaintiffs have argued that Uber knew that things like assigning female riders to female drivers or requiring dash cams to record driver and passenger interactions would reduce assaults, but failed to broadly implement such programs.
Uber has maintained it should not be liable for criminal conduct by the drivers it connects with passengers, and that its background checks and disclosures about assaults were sufficient.
The litigation threatens to reopen wounds from Uber’s early years, when the company was dogged by safety controversies, allegations of lax driver vetting, and a culture critics said prioritized growth over protecting passengers.
With hundreds of millions of dollars potentially at stake, the outcome could weigh on Uber’s balance sheet and complicate its relationships with regulators and investors who have closely tracked its safety record.
The company has made safety a central talking point in recent years, publishing U.S. Safety Reports that detail reported sexual assaults, rolling out features such as in-app ride verification, video and audio recording of rides, anomaly detection, and partnering with survivor advocacy groups to reform driver training.
Uber has also touted the formation of a Safety Advisory Board chaired by former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and pledged $10 million through its “Driving Change” initiative to support organizations working to end gender-based violence.
Despite these measures, Uber’s safety reputation has remained fragile. In its latest safety report published last year, covering the 2021–2022 period, Uber said reports of serious sexual assault on its platform have fallen by 44% since its first report in 2017–2018. But with thousands of cases still documented, critics say systemic risks remain.
Prompted by an August New York Times report on the issue, a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee sent a letter last week to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi seeking information on the company’s protocols for responding to and preventing sexual assaults on its rides.
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago and Akash Sriram in Bangalore; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)
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