Second Federal Jury Finds Uber Liable for Sexual Assault by a Driver

Contact: Alex Stack | alex@nejconsult.com

As Uber pushes a “corporate immunity” ballot measure to shield profits, AACA initiative would help protect people against sexual assaults in Ubers

SACRAMENTO — A second federal jury found Uber liable for sexual assault by one of its drivers, delivering another defeat to the multi-billion dollar corporation as it faces thousands more sexual misconduct lawsuits.

This comes as Uber pushes a new law that would rewrite California’s Constitution to silence victims and protect their own profits — limiting access to medical care and making it nearly impossible to get basic legal representation.

In February, Uber was found liable by a federal jury in the first bellwether case of a sexual assault committed by one of its drivers, and investigative reporting has exposed “Uber’s alarming sexual violence problem” and that “measures to stem the violence have been set aside in favor of protecting the company’s business.”

“These verdicts make clear what survivors have known for years — Uber has a systemic sexual assault problem and no intention of fixing it without being forced to,” said AACA spokesperson Alex Stack. “Our sexual assault prevention initiative sets the safety standards, requires the transparency, and closes the legal loopholes that have let Uber escape responsibility for far too long.”

AACA’s Sexual Assault Against Rideshare Passengers and Drivers Prevention and Accountability Act would require Uber to follow the same safety rules as taxis, buses, and trains — requiring them to exercise a heightened standard of care to protect riders and drivers while expanding Uber’s legal responsibility for sexual misconduct, including sexual assault, against passengers and drivers. Additionally, the initiative would implement basic safety measures to protect people:

• Require annual fingerprinting and background checks for rideshare drivers.
• Require notification to riders of known sexual misconduct risks associated with a matched driver.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

New York Times: Second Jury Finds Uber Responsible for Sexual Assault by a Driver

The ride-hailing giant has now lost the first two of more than 3,000 pending federal lawsuits.

By Emily Steel

A federal jury in North Carolina on Monday found Uber liable for a sexual assault by a driver in 2019, handing the ride-hailing company a second consecutive defeat in its first trials of more than 3,000 pending sexual assault and sexual misconduct lawsuits.

The plaintiff, Brianna Mensing, said her Uber driver grabbed her upper, inner thigh and asked if he could “keep it with him” at the end of a late-night ride in March 2019 when she was 23.

During the weeklong trial, lawyers for Uber argued that Ms. Mensing’s claims lacked credibility, stating that they came to light only as part of the lawsuit and that the trip occurred during the “height of her drug addiction.”

The lawsuit was a second bellwether in federal court proceedings that have consolidated thousands of lawsuits against Uber, allowing some procedural matters to be presented before the same judge while each case is tried individually.

The verdicts in bellwether cases are not binding on the other lawsuits, but they provide a test of the arguments in front of a jury. Each side selects a set of cases that play to what it believes to be the strengths of its arguments.

The plaintiffs picked the first case, in which a federal jury in Phoenix ordered Uber in February to pay $8.5 million to a passenger who said a driver had raped her.

Uber picked the North Carolina case, in Charlotte — yet the company still lost. “This was supposed to be one of Uber’s stronger cases,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School who studies mass litigation. “If the company could not persuade a jury here, that sends a powerful signal about the risks it faces going forward.”

Matt Kallman, a spokesman for Uber, noted that the jury had awarded Ms. Mensing a far smaller sum of $5,000. “The jury’s award represents a tiny fraction of previous demands, and should further bring these cases back to reality,” Mr. Kallman said. He added that Uber had “strong grounds for appeal” in both cases.

Uber faces scrutiny across the country as lawmakers, investors and others move to hold the company accountable for the prevalence of sexual violence during rides. Uber has long maintained that the vast majority of its trips in the United States — 99.9 percent — occur without an incident of any kind and that it is one of the safest ways to get around.

Ms. Mensing, who testified that she had struggled for much of her life with addiction to drugs and alcohol, said her greatest fear in pursuing the case was that she would not be believed. She said she had continued with her lawsuit in the hope that the company would take responsibility.

“I’m here because this is ridiculous that it keeps happening to women,” she said.