Uber Defeats Passenger Sexual Assault Case in First Trial (1)

Uber Technologies Inc. defeated a lawsuit from a California woman who said her Uber driver sexually assaulted her after a San Francisco jury sided with the company Tuesday in a first-of-its-kind trial.

It’s the first US jury to reach a verdict on the question of whether the ride-sharing giant should be legally responsible for failing to prevent drivers from sexually assaulting passengers. The verdict in favor of Uber is a major victory it seeks to fend off similar cases.

The company still faces hundreds of sexual assault lawsuits from mostly female passengers that have been consolidated in San Francisco state court. Thousands are proceeding in parallel federal court cases also consolidated in San Francisco, where trials a set to start early next year.

The jury determined after two days of deliberation that Uber, a common carrier entity similar to a taxi cab service, bus system, or airline, didn’t fail its legal duty to use the utmost care and caution in maintaining the safety of its passengers.

The three-week trial in the California Superior Court, San Francisco County involved a 2016 incident where an Uber driver sexually assaulted a first-year student at the University of California Santa Cruz, named only as Jessica C. in the case, while she was traveling back home for winter break.

The jury’s verdict said that while Uber was negligent, that negligence was not a substantial factor in causing harm to Jessica C.

The plaintiff’s attorney John Taylor of Taylor & Ring said in an interview after the verdict that he was “hugely disappointed” that the court allowed evidence into the trial that let Uber blame Jessica C. for the harm she faced. He said the court’s decision discourages victims of sexual assault to come forward.

Uber’s attorney Allison Brown of Kirkland & Ellis LLP declined to provide an immediate comment after the verdict. An Uber spokesperson said in a statement that the company “has worked for years to raise the bar on safety, and will continue to do so in the years ahead.”

Jessica C. said in her lawsuit that she was riding in her first ever Uber to the San Jose, Calif., airport in December 2016 when her driver Farrukh Kazim pulled over on a side street and began forcibly kissing and groping her while she was in the front passenger seat. He eventually stopped after she received a phone call, but she said the incident caused her mental health harms and PTSD. She dropped out of school the following semester.

Her attorneys asked the jury to award millions of dollars in damages for her past and future mental health problems stemming from the assault, as well as punitive damages to discourage Uber’s negligence.

Throughout the trial, her attorneys told the jury that Uber’s campaign to grow at all costs meant that it ignored a number of possible pilot programs that would have increased rider safety such as mandatory dashcams. They also argued that Uber under counted thousands of sexual assaults by drivers in its annual safety reports.

Uber countered throughout the trial that sexual assaults by drivers account for less than 1% of the billions of Uber rides the platform facilitates every year. The company also argued that it had the highest safety standards in the industry, with multi-step background checks, a feature allowing riders to share their route with others, and an emergency button in the app that would alert the police.

Brown told the jury that Kazim, who didn’t testify during the trial, had passed a multi-step background check from Uber prior to the incident which found no criminal history. He also received almost unanimous five-star reviews from other riders, and he continued to drive for Uber for years after the incident because Jessica C. never reported it to the company. Uber only disabled his account after she brought the lawsuit, which Brown said was the first time it heard of the incident.

“We go above an beyond, we do continuous monitoring” of the drivers, Brown told the jury in closing statements. “Not because we’re required to but because we’re exercising the highest care.”

The case is In Re: Uber Rideshare Cases, Cal. Super. Ct., No. CJC21005188, 9/29/25.