Uber found liable in sexual assault case and ordered to pay $8.5 million

A federal jury this week found Uber to be legally responsible in a 2023 case of sexual assault — ordering the rideshare giant to pay $8.5 million to a woman who said one of its drivers raped her during a trip using the platform.

The verdict, reached Thursday in Arizona, follows years of criticism against Uber's safety record, much of which spans from thousands of incidents of sexual assault reported by both passengers and drivers. Because Uber drivers are categorized as gig workers — working as contractors, rather than company employees — the platform has long maintained it's not liable for their misconduct.

''Uber spends billions of dollars to make all riders feel like they're (riding) with Uber. And that is what the jury found yesterday," Ellyn Hurd, one of the attorneys representing plaintiff Jaylynn Dean, told The Associated Press. The verdict determined the driver is an ''apparent agent'' of the company, she explained, making Uber liable for the assault.

Hurd added her team was ''very proud of our client for facing such a huge, powerful company.'' And the jury's decision could carry significant impact for similar cases, she noted.

Uber said it plans to appeal. And beyond apparent agency, the jury didn't find the company to be negligent or have defective safety systems.

The verdict ''affirms that Uber acted responsibly and has invested meaningfully in rider safety,'' spokesperson Andrew Hasbun said in a statement. He added that the award was ''far below'' the full amount initially requested from the plaintiff's lawyers.

The lawsuit stems from an November 2023 Uber ride when Dean, who was 19 at the time, was heading to her hotel after celebrating her upcoming graduation from flight attendant training at her boyfriend's home in Arizona. Partway through the ride, the complaint alleged, the driver stopped the car, entered the back seat and raped her.

The lawsuit argued Uber had long known its drivers were assaulting passengers, and that it didn't implement the safety measures needed to stop this from happening. The complaint, filed in December 2023, called the company's response ''slow and inadequate'' — putting ''the lives and well-being of its customers at grave risk.''

Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Uber says it has taken multiple steps in efforts to improve safety on its platform, including teaming up with Lyft in 2021 to create a database of drivers ousted from their ride-hailing services for complaints over sexual assault and other crimes.

The company maintains that sexual assault reports have decreased substantially over the years. According to reports from Uber, 5,981 incidents of sexual assault were reported in U.S. rides between 2017 and 2018 — compared to 2,717 between 2021 and 2022 (the latest years with data available), which the platform says represented 0.0001% of total trips nationwide.

Still, critics stress that ridesharing companies need to develop more guardrails to protect consumers and take clearer responsibility in cases of assault.

Sarah London, another attorney representing Dean, stated that Thursday's verdict validates ''survivors who have come forward at great personal risk to demand accountability against Uber.'' Still, she said the work is far from over.

The AP does not typically name people who have said they were sexually abused, unless they have given consent through their attorneys or come forward publicly, as Dean has done through her lawyers.

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