Uber Driver Sexual Assaults and Misconduct Reports Must Be Disclosed in Lawsuit Discovery

A federal judge has told Uber that it must give plaintiffs who have filed sexual assault lawsuits against the popular rideshare company information about incident and safety reports of driver sexual misconduct toward passengers received between 2017 and 2020, as part of the discovery process in the growing litigation.

There are currently more than 300 Uber driver sexual assault and sexual misconduct lawsuits filed nationwide, each involving similar allegations that former passengers were harassed, attacked or even raped by drivers.

Plaintiffs maintain that the rideshare company failed to take appropriate safety precautions that could have prevented sexual predators from working as drivers and targeting passengers on a regular basis.

Given common questions of fact and law raised in the complaints, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation established an Uber driver sexual assault lawsuit MDL in October 2023, centralizing all claims before U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in the Northern District of California, for coordinated discovery and a series of early “bellwether” trials to gauge how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that may be repeated throughout the litigation.

Although Uber announced “Safe Ride Fees” in 2014, plaintiffs maintain that this has only led to cursory background checks on drivers, and that the rideshare company prioritized profits and growth over creating a safer environment for passengers, failing to take reasonable steps like adding surveillance cameras to vehicles, or giving drivers proper training on issues of sexual assault and harassment.

As part of the discovery process, plaintiffs have sought access to the underlying data for hundreds of thousands of reported incidents identified by Uber between 2017 and 2020, which were the basis of two separate Safety Reports published by the company in 2019 and 2022. However, the company has resisted turning over all of the information.

Earlier this month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros issued a court order (PDF) requiring Uber to allow plaintiffs access to data on any safety report that involved sexual assault or misconduct. However, she blocked plaintiffs from having access to the company’s entire history of incident reports from that time period, indicating that many had nothing to do with passenger safety or sexual misconduct at all.

In a status report (PDF) issued by the parties on July 11, plaintiffs called for Uber to begin producing the documents by July 19, and complete production by July 26. However, the rideshare service’s attorneys indicated that Uber was still investigating the technical requirements to produce the documents at that time.

The status report also noted disputes in a number of other areas concerning the discovery of documents needed to create a database of known facts and records related to plaintiffs’ claims and Uber’s policies toward sexual assault and misconduct by its drivers. These include disputes over search terms, access to certain databases where other files might be held, information on how the company’s policies have changed and been implemented, and more.

Both plaintiffs and the Court have noted that the safety reports received by Uber, combined with communications between company executives and document custodians, will help draw a more complete picture of what was happening inside the company while numerous attacks on passengers were being perpetrated on a regular basis.

In a July 18 order (PDF) filed after a status conference held that day, Magistrate Judge Cisneros stepped in to resolve a number of the issues, ordering Uber to allow plaintiffs access to all databases where its incident and safety reports were stored by this week. She also set a number of dates throughout late July and early August to resolve most of the remaining disputes.

Following coordinated general discovery in the Uber sexual assault lawsuits, it is expected that the court establish a bellwether process where a small group of representative claims will go through case-specific discovery and be prepared for early trial dats, which will be used to gauge how juries are likely to respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation.

While the outcome of any bellwether trials in the MDL will not be binding on other claims, average Uber sexual assault lawsuit payouts awarded by juries may influence later settlement agreements. If no Uber sexual assault lawsuit settlement is reached, each individual claim may be remanded back to the U.S. District Court where it was originally filed for a future trial date.