Uber, Lyft Car-Crash Liability Question Sent to Ohio Justices

A Cleveland federal judge presiding over a lawsuit against Uber and Lyft for a car crash asked the Ohio Supreme Court to decide whether the state’s product liability law bars personal-injury claims arising from mobile phone apps.

The issue is that such apps aren’t considered a “product” as defined by the state law. But that may not matter because the law doesn’t appear to do away with common-law negligence claims based on a design defect theory for something that isn’t a “product,” Judge J. Philip Calabrese of the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio wrote Monday as ...