Judge prunes some claims from bellwether cases in Uber sexual assault litigation

(CN) — A federal judge in San Francisco cut some of the claims in the bellwether cases headed for trial as soon as December by women who say their Uber drivers sexually assaulted them.

Lawsuits against Uber by more than 1,400 plaintiffs are consolidated before Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco for pretrial proceedings. Twenty so-called bellwether cases were selected by Uber and plaintiffs’ counsel to go to trial first and be used as a template for subsequent trials or settlements.

In his Tuesday decision, Breyer, a Bill Clinton appointee, agreed with Uber that some of the claims in the various bellwether cases shouldn’t go before a jury.

For one, the judge found fraud claims weren’t plausible over Uber’s advertisements warning about drunk driving and offering ride-sharing as an alternative — presumably without mentioning the risk of sexual assault.

“The court is not convinced that a reasonable consumer could believe the two ads at issue — ‘Don’t drink and drive, call an Uber,’ and ‘Stay safe tonight. Use Uber. — conveyed anything more than a generic encouragement to take an Uber ride rather than drive while drunk,” Breyer said. “Indeed, Uber’s designated driver marketing is directly analogous to the types of language other courts have readily identified as non-actionable puffery.”

However Breyer denied Uber’s attempt to throw out fraud claims saying the ride-hailing behemoth omitted information about drivers’ previous misconduct and criminal history when its app identifies the driver to a passenger.

“It is not outlandish for Uber riders to expect that the driver notifications, purportedly designed to help them stay safe and ‘get to know their driver,’ would include relevant negative information about a driver that might help a rider make an informed decision about whether to accept a ride,” the judge said.

On a motion to dismiss, the judge doesn’t rule on the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims but only considers whether they meet the legal threshold to proceed.

The judge also dismissed some of the bellwether plaintiffs’ product liability claims related to Uber’s “safe ride matching” feature; he said the option is more akin to a service than a product.

But Breyer agreed with the plaintiffs that the absence of a gender-matching option on the Uber app, which is a product, can give rise to a product liability claim.

Representatives for Uber and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

The consolidated lawsuits have the potential to rock the industry and could lead to safety changes such as mandatory in-vehicle driver surveillance.

“This is one of the largest federal sexual assault litigations ever, and it will undoubtedly change the American rideshare industry forever,” Kevin Conway, managing partner at Peiffer Wolf, said in 2023 when the cases were consolidated. “In the future, we’ll look back with disbelief that Uber drivers were once permitted to operate without any meaningful or effective oversight.

Peiffer Wolf partner Rachel Abrams is one of the lead lawyers in the multi-district litigation.

Abrams said in announcing the suits in 2023 that Uber has been aware since 2014 that drivers were sexually assaulting passengers. Even though the company acknowledged assaults were happening in 2019, she maintains the company has failed to implement policies or mandates to protect riders.

Abrams said Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick intentionally hired drivers without checking fingerprints or combing through FBI databases, while the company actively lobbied against regulatory efforts to require biometric tests.

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