Potentially thousands of women from all over the U.S. who claim they were sexually assaulted by their Uber drivers won't be able to bring their lawsuits back to San Francisco County Superior Court, a California state appeals court has ruled.
On June 24, a three-justice panel of the California First District Appellate Court upheld the ruling of San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman in the sprawling litigation against the rideshare giant that has consistently led back to courts in San Francisco.
In the decision, the appellate justices said they found Schulman had made no legal errors in determining San Francisco's state courts are not the forum in which to hear lawsuits against Uber involving plaintiffs who aren't from California or who allegedly were assaulted in places other than the Golden State.
Since 2020, thousands of lawsuits have piled into California courts against Uber, which is headquartered in San Francisco.
All of the lawsuits involve claims from women that their Uber drivers inappropriately touched them or more violently sexually assaulted them while they were using Uber's service. All of them claim Uber should be made to pay for not properly screening their drivers or otherwise enacting measures and policies to prevent such alleged sexual assaults.
However, the overwhelming majority of the lawsuits have been brought by women who are not from San Francisco or anywhere else in California, or who have sued over incidents that took place in other states, such as Hawaii or Texas.
So numerous were the lawsuits being parked in California's state courts, however, that the presiding judge over San Francisco's superior courts agreed to consolidate the cases into San Francisco County Superior Court before Judge Schulman to decide what should become of them.
Once the cases landed before Schulman, however, the parties immediately entered into a dispute over what should happen next.
On one side, plaintiffs sought directives from the court to select certain of the cases to serve as so-called "bellwether trials," or trials on just a few of specifically chosen cases that could be used to test the viability of the legal claims against Uber and of Uber's legal defenses.
Uber, on the other hand, argued Schulman should kick at least hundreds of cases from out-of-state plaintiffs, or involving out-of-state incidents out of San Francisco court under the legal principle known as forum non conveniens. Essentially, Uber argued those cases had no business in San Francisco County Superior Court, and should be heard elsewhere.
They asserted the cases involve individual plaintiffs with individualized claims, which cannot be heard together, because they are not "corporate misconduct cases in which the individual Plaintiffs' claims are, in effect, merely illustrative of their larger claims."
Schulman agreed and ordered thousands of cases in his court to be stayed. The judge determined the coordinated action would bog down an already overtaxed court system by forcing him and other San Francisco judges to handle cases based in other state's laws, which many already believed had no business in California court.
As part of his order, Schulman gave plaintiffs six months to refile their lawsuits in more appropriate courts. If they did not refile within that time, the judge would order those lawsuits dismissed with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs would not be allowed to file such claims again.
As part of those proceedings, the judge secured the agreement of both Uber and attorneys for the plaintiffs to those terms.
Following that order, however, the cases took another turn.
While plaintiffs appealed Schulman's order to the California First District Appellate Court, more than 1,000 cases that Schulman ordered out of his court returned to San Francisco, but in federal court, where they were consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by federal judges.
Uber has similarly opposed that move, continuing to assert the cases are too different to allow them to move forward collectively.
While those cases remain pending in federal court, the state appellate panel appeared to close the door on any possible return to San Francisco's state courts for the out-of-state cases.
The justices rejected all of the plaintiffs' attempts to undo Schulman's order staying and potentially dismissing the cases in his court. The justices particularly noted that Schulman had issued the order as "stipulated," noting the judge had presented a proposed order to the parties, had gathered their thoughts, had made changes to the order in accordance with the various arguments - notably expanding the refiling period to 180 days from 30 days - and then had issued the order with their apparent agreement.
And the justices rejected the plaintiffs' argument that Uber's user agreement requires the cases to be heard in a court chosen by plaintiffs. The agreement states plaintiffs can bring "individual claims of sexual assault or sexual harassment" in court and "Uber agrees to honor your election."
However, while the plaintiffs assert this means Uber cannot object to a sexual assault lawsuit filed in any court, the justices said the language is far less clear than plaintiffs claim and is open to other interpretations.
The appellate decision was authored by Justice James A. Richman. Justices Therese Stewart and Marla J. Miller concurred.
Plaintiffs were represented on appeal by attorneys Alan Charles Dell’Ario, of Napa; John Eddie Williams Jr., John Boundas, Brian Abramson, Margaret Leococke and Walt Cubberly, of Williams, Hart & Boundas, of Houston, Texas; and William A. Levin, of Levin Simes, of San Francisco.
Uber was represented by attorneys Kannon K. Shanmugam, Randall S. Luskey, Robert Atkins and Kyle Smith, of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, of Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.