Uber has lost its second consecutive courtroom test over rider safety. A federal jury in Charlotte, NC, on Monday found Uber liable for a 2019 incident, marking its second straight loss in the first of more than 3,000 sexual assault and sexual harassment lawsuits it faces. The plaintiff, Brianna Mensing, testified that when she was 23, her driver grabbed her upper inner thigh at the end of a late-night ride and asked if he could “keep it with him,” per the New York Times. Uber’s lawyers attacked her credibility, arguing the ride occurred at the “height of her drug addiction” and emphasizing that the allegation only surfaced through the lawsuit filed three years after the fact.
The case was one of a set of “bellwether” trials meant to gauge how juries might react to arguments in the consolidated federal litigation. The verdict “sends a powerful signal about the risks [Uber] faces going forward,” Stanford law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom tells the Times, noting Uber had selected this case, believing it to offer strong arguments in the company’s favor. Though the driver denied the alleged action, friends of Mensing backed up her story, per CBS News.
While a Phoenix jury in February ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to a woman who said she was raped by a driver, Mensing was awarded $5,000—a figure Uber highlighted as “a tiny fraction of previous demands.” The company, stressing that the jury had confirmed battery but not sexual assault, has vowed to appeal both verdicts. Uber was previously found not liable in the first US trial over driver sexual assault claims in California state court.
