A federal jury in Phoenix on Thursday ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to a passenger who said one of its drivers had raped her, setting the stage for thousands of similar cases around the country.
The ride-hailing giant has long maintained that it is not liable for the misconduct of drivers on its platform, whom it classifies as independent contractors, not employees. But the jury rejected that defense, providing a road map for more than 3,000 pending sexual assault and sexual misconduct lawsuits that accuse the company of systemic safety failures.
The lawsuit was brought by Jaylynn Dean, who said her Uber driver raped her in November 2023 during a ride to her hotel from her boyfriend’s apartment in Tempe, Ariz.
“I want to make sure it doesn’t happen to other women,” Ms. Dean said on the witness stand. “I’m doing this for other women who thought the same thing I did, that they were making the safe and smart choice — but that, you know, there are risks of being assaulted.”
Uber fended off other claims in the case, including that it was negligent in its safety practices and that its app was defective.
The jury’s award fell far short of the $144 million that Ms. Dean’s lawyers had requested in damages. The jury did not dish out heavier penalties in part because it did not find that the company’s actions were “outrageous, oppressive or intolerable” or that they created substantial risk or significant harm.
“This verdict affirms that Uber acted responsibly and has invested meaningfully in rider safety,” Matt Kallman, a spokesman for Uber, said in a statement. “We will continue to put safety at the heart of everything we do.”
Mr. Kallman said Uber planned to appeal the verdict, stating that the company believes that the court provided errant instructions to the jury.
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.
In September, a California jury found in a state court case that Uber was not responsible for the sexual assault that a woman said she experienced during a ride in 2016.
Uber faces increasing scrutiny across the country as lawmakers, investors and others move to hold the company accountable for a pervasive pattern of sexual violence during rides.
Ms. Dean’s case is a bellwether in federal court proceedings that have consolidated thousands of the sexual assault lawsuits against Uber, allowing for certain procedural matters to be presented before the same judge while each case is tried individually. The verdict is not binding on the other cases, but it offered a “real-world test” of the arguments in front of a jury, said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School.
“Bellwethers give both sides — and the public — a chance to see whether the litigation truly has legs,” she said.
Over three weeks, jurors weighed the harrowing personal account of Ms. Dean as well as testimony from Uber executives and thousands of pages of internal company documents, including some showing that Uber had flagged her ride as a higher risk for a serious safety incident moments before she was picked up. Uber never warned her, with an executive testifying that it would have been “impractical” to do so.
Lawyers for Ms. Dean introduced documents suggesting that Uber resisted introducing safety features such as in-car cameras because it believed these measures would slow corporate growth.
Ms. Dean spent hours giving emotional testimony about the 2023 incident. Then 19, she had recently moved to Arizona to study to be a flight attendant. She passed her test one day that November, and after celebrating, she said, she was intoxicated and ordered an Uber ride from her boyfriend’s apartment back to her hotel.
During the ride, Ms. Dean said, the driver pulled into a dark parking lot, climbed into the back seat and raped her. She described “dozing in and out of consciousness” and being unable to stop the driver.
She reported the incident to the police and to Uber, which barred him. The driver did not face criminal charges and was not named in the suit.
After the incident, Ms. Dean said, she abandoned a career as a flight attendant because she said the work environment was difficult. She moved home and is now working as a dispatcher for emergency medical services and attending nursing school. She fears the dark, she said, because it takes her back to the seat of the car in the dark parking lot where the rape occurred. She sleeps with the lights on, sometimes in her parents’ bed, she said.
Uber’s lawyers said the driver had no criminal history, had received top ratings from passengers, had completed training and had acknowledged that he was aware of Uber’s rule that bans sex between drivers and passengers. They said the company was the industry leader in safety, developing a machine-learning tool to assess the risk of potential rides as well as other safety features and releasing public reports documenting assaults and other safety incidents on the platform.
Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer, pushed back against claims that the company “dragged its feet” on safety features like dashcams. However, “I’ll be the first one to say we have not done enough,” he said. “There’s a lot more that we have to do.”
Emily Steel is an investigative reporter covering business for The Times. She has uncovered sexual misconduct at major companies and recently has focused on the ride-hailing industry.
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