Uber Ordered to Pay $8.5 Million in Passenger Sexual Assault Case

By Elias Schisgall

Uber Technologies was ordered to pay $8.5 million in compensatory damages after a jury found the company liable for the 2023 sexual assault of a 19-year-old passenger.

The passenger, Jaylynn Dean, was picked up by Uber driver Hassan Turray shortly after midnight on Nov. 15, 2023 while she was alone and intoxicated. Turay then stopped the ride and assaulted Dean in the backseat while she was incapacitated, Dean's lawyers said Friday, citing testimony and evidence from the trial.

The jury found that Uber was not liable for negligence or design defects, but was liable for apparent agency, according to court documents. It did not find Uber liable for punitive damages.

Uber removed Turay from the platform after Dean reported the incident to police and the company.

The lawyers said Uber internal documents revealed at trial showed that the app's internal Safety Risk Assessed Dispatch algorithm identified the trip as having an elevated risk of a serious safety incident. The company dispatched the ride regardless, the lawyers said.

Uber said Friday that it plans to appeal the ruling, adding that the court erred in its instructions to the jury about whether to consider Turay an apparent agent of the company.

"The jury rejected claims that Uber was negligent and that our safety systems were defective," Uber spokesperson Andrew Hasbun said. "They awarded an amount far below what was sought, and declined to award punitive damages altogether."

"This verdict affirms that Uber acted responsibly and has invested meaningfully in rider safety," Hasbun added. "We will continue to put safety at the heart of everything we do."

The company added that a judge in a similar case in California state court dismissed the claim that a driver was an agent of the company before trial. The jury found in Uber's favor in that case, the company said.

The verdict follows a nearly four-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona which featured testimony from a range of top executives, including Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi and co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick.

Dean's trial was the first in federal multidistrict litigation encompassing more than 3,000 sexual-assault lawsuits against the company, the lawyers said. "This verdict for the plaintiff in the very first bellwether trial is a harbinger of what's to come," Sarah London, who served as co-lead trial attorney and is co-leading the multidistrict litigation, said Friday.

Uber and other ride-hailing services have long faced scrutiny over the risks of sexual assault and misconduct. A 2019 report revealed that Uber received nearly 6,000 reports of sexual assault involving U.S. passengers and drivers during 2017 and 2018, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"Corporate presentations, internal messages, and testimony from top corporate, safety, and marketing executives showed that Uber knew based on years of internal analysis, rider reports, law enforcement reports, and public data that women riding alone at night -- particularly when intoxicated -- faced heightened danger of sexual assault, but chose not to disclose these risks because doing so posed 'serious business implications,'" the plaintiff's attorneys said Friday.

Uber said Friday that reported sexual assaults have fallen 44% since the 2019 report, adding that upwards of 99.9% of trips are completed without any reported safety incidents. The company said it leads the industry in transparency around sexual assaults.

Write to Elias Schisgall at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-06-26 1225ET