Uber’s Legal Duty to Riders at Forefront of Mass Assault Cases

Uber Technologies Inc. will seek to fend off claims that it should be held liable for failing to prevent its drivers from sexually assaulting passengers at a hearing Thursday involving hundreds of consolidated California lawsuits.

Judge Ethan Schulman of the San Francisco Superior Court must determine whether the ride-hailing giant will face a set of bellwether jury trials this fall that strike at fundamental questions over the scope of duties that gig economy platforms owe to their users.

The hearing comes as the company faces thousands of similar lawsuits from across the country that have been consolidated into a multidistrict litigation in a California federal court.

If found liable, Uber could face significant damages claims from victims, and may have to undergo additional costly measures, such as fingerprinting drivers, mandatory dashcams, or real-time surveillance.

Uber argues it can’t be held liable for what it says are unforeseeable criminal acts by their drivers—third-party contractors that Uber simply connects with a passenger. The company maintains that it has deployed industry-leading safety measures, including background checks and GPS-tracking for unusual events, that are beyond sufficient for its legal duties.

“Society reveals itself on Uber’s platform, and as with every other part of society, the Uber platform cannot eliminate all criminal misconduct,” Uber’s motion for summary judgment said.

The company has also undertaken a number of other strategies to battle the wave of assault lawsuits. In Nevada, Uber backed a ballot measure that sought to cap the amount of attorneys’ fees that plaintiff-side trial lawyers could win, although the Nevada Supreme Court blocked the ballot question. Uber also attempted to break up the federal multidistrict litigation with a petition to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit arguing that the app’s terms of service agreement prohibits users from bringing mass consolidated legal actions. The appeals court also rejected those arguments.

Uber didn’t return a request for comment.

Duty to Protect

Many of the incidents alleged follow a similar pattern. The plaintiffs, mostly women, say they called Uber rides while they were inebriated, pointing to the company’s advertisements explaining that using the ride share service is a safe and effective alternative to driving drunk.

In many of the cases, the drivers, who didn’t need to undergo any training from Uber or include a camera while they drove, would allegedly take advantage of the women.

In one bellwether case, a college student in San Jose who had been drinking ordered an Uber for the first time to take her to the airport. After she told her driver she had been drinking, the driver allegedly stopped the ride and began forcibly kissing and groping her.

Central to the case in the California state court is whether Uber acted affirmatively in creating a risk of assaults, called misfeasance, or whether it failed to act in preventing them, called nonfeasance.

“This is one of the huge issues that runs through all of this, and kind of frames the case,” said Christopher Robinette, a tort law professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.

Under California law, there is “no general duty to rescue,” but there are exceptions based on the relationship between the defendant and plaintiff, Robinette said.

The plaintiffs say that Uber does have a special relationship with its riders as a common carrier, akin to a passenger train or taxi cab service that is generally available to the public. As a common carrier, Uber would owe a duty to prevent harm to its passengers and must not only provide reasonable care, but the “utmost care and diligence” for passengers.

Uber argues that it doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of a common carrier: It doesn’t own the vehicles used by drivers, and it doesn’t conduct rides along a fixed route or based on a fixed schedule.

The plaintiffs contend that Uber can’t simultaneously promote itself as a transportation service while avoiding responsibilities that come with that role.

Judge Charles Breyer of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, who is overseeing the federal multidistrict litigation, ruled last year that Uber does qualify as a common carrier and can face liability for its failure to protect passengers.

In personal injury cases, defendants generally like to hammer the argument that they had no legal duty. “It’s generally a pure question of law, so you don’t need to have a jury trial to resolve it,” said Matthew Kita, an appellate personal injury attorney who is of counsel at Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Team LLP. “If they can convince a judge that there’s no duty, they can have the case thrown out at the very beginning.”

Robinette said the burden appears high for Uber to prove its case before Schulman, especially given the fact-intensive nature of the claims.

“Even if you accept their business model of, ‘We’re just connecting riders to drivers,’ it seems hard to argue that you don’t have any responsibility for the safety of the rider if you’ve been paid,” Robinette said. “It seems hard to wash your hands of that entirely.”

Williams Hart & Boundas LLP, Levin Simes LLP, and Estey & Bomberger LLP are co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs. Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP represent Uber.

The case is In re Uber Rideshare Cases, Cal. Super. Ct., No. CJC21005188, summary judgment hearing 7/31/25.