Uber found liable in sexual assault case and ordered to pay $8.5 million

A federal jury has ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to a woman who says one of its drivers raped her during a 2023 trip.

Uber has faced criticism for its safety record, much of it spanning from thousands of incidents of sexual assault reported by both passengers and drivers. Because drivers on the ridesharing platform are categorized as gig workers — working as contractors, rather than company employees — Uber has long maintained that its not liable for their misconduct.

Thursday's verdict, reached in Arizona, “validates the thousands of survivors who have come forward at great personal risk to demand accountability against Uber,” said Sarah London, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiff — who said the company has put the "focus on profit over passenger safety.”

Uber said it plans to appeal the jury's decision, and noted that the jury did not find the company to be negligent, nor that its safety systems were “defective.”

The verdict “affirms that Uber acted responsibly and has invested meaningfully in rider safety,” spokesperson Andrew Hasbun said in a statement. He also referenced the fact that the jury did not award the full amount initially requested from the plaintiffs' lawyers.

The lawsuit stems from an Uber ride in November 2023, when the plaintiff was heading to her hotel after celebrating her upcoming graduation from flight attendant training at her boyfriend’s home in Arizona. Partway through the ride, the complaint alleged, the driver stopped the car, entered the back seat and raped the woman.

The lawsuit argued that Uber had long known that its drivers were assaulting passengers, and that it didn’t implement the safety measures needed to stop this from happening.

Uber has previously faced similar allegations of not having sufficient guardrails to protect rider safety. But Uber maintains that sexual assault reports have decreased substantially over the years. According to company reports, 5,981 incidents of sexual assault were reported in U.S. rides between 2017 and 2018 — compared to 2,717 between 2021 and 2022 (the latest years with data available), which Uber says represented 0.0001% of total trips nationwide.

Uber has taken multiple steps to try to fix its problems with safety, including teaming up with Lyft in 2021 to create a database of drivers ousted from their ride-hailing services for complaints over sexual assault and other crimes.

Still, critics stress that there's more work to be done — and have increasingly called on ridesharing companies to take responsibility for assaults.

The Associated Press does not name people who have said they were sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly or have given consent through their attorneys.

AP Writer Josh Funk contributed to this report.