Uber’s New Trump-Style Tactics: Attack Academics & Doctors Who Disagree

Contact: alex@nejconsult.com

Smear campaign against brain injury specialist and UC Berkeley Law shows Uber is worried that it’s losing

SACRAMENTO — Faced with a credentialed brain injury doctor and an independent UC Berkeley Law analysis exposing the real-world harm of its ballot measure, Uber has launched a Trump-style attack campaign — smearing the doctor and demanding UC Berkeley “investigate” its own researchers.

In a new ad this week, Uber attacks Dr. Topher Stephenson, M.D. — a practicing brain injury specialist who has treated thousands of crash victims — attacking him for being a paid witness on behalf of crash victims. The ad ignores Dr. Stephenson’s medical credentials and decades of patient care, recasting his warnings about the measure’s impact on crash victims as a financial scheme.

And earlier this month, Uber attacked an independent analysis from UC Berkeley School of Law’s Civil Justice Research Initiative as “literally trial lawyer-funded talking points” and called on UC Berkeley to “investigate” its own peer-reviewed legal scholarship.

“This is how a losing campaign behaves,” said Alex Stack, AACA spokesperson. “Uber’s playbook is straight out of Trump’s: when the facts aren’t on your side, attack the doctors, attack the academics, attack anyone who tells the truth.”

Here’s the ad that Uber is so worried about:

The report that Uber is so concerned about, “An Analysis of Uber’s 2026 California Ballot Initiative and its Likely Impacts on Californians Injured in Car Accident Cases,” concludes that the measure is “likely to be misunderstood by voters” and warns that it could “radically restructure” the civil justice system in ways that benefit corporations at the expense of injured Californians. It also finds: “Many victims will likely receive nothing at all if the initiative is passed.” The analysis had the following key takeaways:

• “The proposed initiative is confusing and likely to be misunderstood by voters”
• “The proposed initiative, if passed, is likely to decrease the availability of legal representation in California”
• “Restrictions on the recovery of medical expenses will likely result in increased health care costs to state and local governments as well as in higher health care costs for injured individuals.”