Uber Lawsuit Lawyers: Sexual Assault MDL, FTC, and DOJ Cases

Uber has been sued by passengers, drivers, federal regulators, state attorneys general, and the U.S. Department of Justice, and the active docket is unusually large for a single company. The biggest Uber lawsuit right now is a federal multidistrict proceeding over driver sexual assaults, with more than 2,700 plaintiffs and bellwether trials already producing verdicts for both sides. Alongside it sit a Federal Trade Commission case over subscription billing, a DOJ disability discrimination case, driver pay and misclassification fights, and thousands of individual accident claims.

The Sexual Assault MDL

The largest case against Uber is In re: Uber Technologies, Inc., Passenger Sexual Assault Litigation, consolidated in the Northern District of California before Judge Charles R. Breyer. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized the cases in October 2023, starting with 79 lawsuits across 13 districts.¹ By late 2025 the plaintiff count had grown past 2,700, spread across 30 states.²

Plaintiffs allege Uber knew as early as 2014 that drivers were sexually assaulting passengers and chose growth over safety. The complaints point to inadequate background checks, the absence of mandatory dashcams, undercounted assaults in Uber’s own safety reports, and marketing that misled riders about how safe the platform really was. Legal theories include negligence, misrepresentation, products liability, and vicarious liability.¹

Uber tried to block the MDL by invoking a “collective action waiver” in its terms of service. Judge Breyer ruled those clauses unenforceable in the MDL context in May 2024, and the Ninth Circuit let that ruling stand in March 2025.¹

Bellwether Verdicts

The first national trial, in San Francisco Superior Court in September 2025, ended in a defense verdict. The jury found Uber was negligent but that its negligence was not a “substantial factor in causing harm” to the plaintiff, Jessica C.³

The first federal bellwether went the other way. Plaintiff Jaylynn Dean alleged she was raped by her Uber driver in Tempe, Arizona in November 2023. On February 5, 2026, the jury found Uber liable on an “apparent agent” theory and awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages. The panel declined to award punitive damages; Dean’s team had asked for $144 million.⁴ More than a dozen additional bellwether trials are scheduled.⁵

One point about standing: for sexual assault and harassment claims, Uber is not able to force riders into arbitration. The company dropped mandatory arbitration for those claims in 2018 after a suit by 14 women, and Congress codified the carve-out in the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of March 2022.²

FTC Case Over Uber One Billing

On April 21, 2025, the Federal Trade Commission sued Uber in the Northern District of California over the Uber One subscription. The complaint alleges Uber enrolled consumers without consent, charged them before free trials ended, and made cancellation extraordinarily difficult, with some users forced through as many as 23 screens and 32 actions to get out. The FTC also says Uber promised subscribers $25 per month in savings without accounting for the $9.99 monthly fee.⁶

The charges include violations of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. In December 2025, the FTC was joined by 21 states and the District of Columbia in an amended complaint that added state consumer protection claims and sought civil penalties, restitution, and permanent injunctions.⁷ The case is pending.

DOJ Disability Discrimination Suit

On September 11, 2025, the Department of Justice sued Uber under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The complaint alleges Uber routinely refused service to passengers with disabilities, including blind riders traveling with service animals and riders using mobility devices, charged improper fees, and failed to change policies that produced the discrimination.⁸

Uber moved to dismiss, and the court denied that motion on March 5, 2026. Fact discovery is open until March 2027, a settlement conference is set for August 2026, and if no deal is reached, trial is scheduled to begin February 15, 2028.⁹

Driver Wage and Classification Fights

In November 2023, the New York Attorney General obtained a $328 million settlement over improper deductions from driver pay, with Uber paying $290 million and Lyft $38 million. It covered drivers who worked in New York State during specified periods between 2014 and 2017.¹⁰ The deal also installed new protections beginning March 1, 2024: one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked (capped at 56 hours per year), a $26 hourly earnings floor for drivers outside New York City (adjusted annually, with NYC drivers covered by existing TLC minimums), multilingual in-app support and detailed earnings statements, and a right to appeal deactivations. Rust Consulting handles distributions.¹¹

In California, the state Labor Commissioner and Attorney General have wage-theft cases alleging Uber willfully misclassified drivers under both the ABC test and the Borello test. The litigation stay was lifted in July 2024 and trial is anticipated in 2026, though available relief is limited to conduct before December 15, 2020 because of Proposition 22.¹²

Prop 22 itself survived a constitutional challenge in July 2024 when the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld it in Castellanos v. State of California. Justice Goodwin Liu wrote that the measure did not permanently strip the Legislature of authority over workers’ compensation.¹³ A separate federal court in the Northern District of California approved an $8.4 million class settlement in July 2022 for California drivers who had opted out of Uber’s arbitration agreement; that deal did not reclassify anyone as an employee.¹⁴

Accident Claims and Insurance Coverage

Individual crash cases are the quieter but much larger part of Uber’s litigation volume. Available coverage turns on what the driver was doing when the crash happened. During an active trip or on the way to a pickup, Uber’s commercial policy carries up to $1 million in third-party liability. When the driver is logged in but waiting for a request, coverage falls to $50,000 per person and $100,000 per accident. When the app is off, Uber provides no coverage.¹⁵

Reported settlements illustrate the range. In California alone, a $25 million wrongful-death settlement in Los Angeles involved a distracted driver; a $12 million San Francisco settlement went to a passenger with permanent brain damage after a driver ran a red light; and a $9.5 million Sacramento settlement went to a bicyclist with spinal injuries. In New York, an Uber driver rear-ended by a truck who required spinal surgery recovered $2.85 million.¹⁶

California’s statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death is generally two years. The practical challenge is Uber’s independent-contractor classification, which complicates direct liability; plaintiffs typically must show the driver was active on the platform at the time of the crash to reach Uber’s commercial insurance.

Arbitration: Why Many Riders Can’t Sue

Outside the sexual assault carve-out, Uber’s terms of service require arbitration and bar class actions, and courts have broadly enforced those clauses. In McGinty v. Uber (September 2024), a New Jersey appellate court held that a family could not sue over a crash because someone on the account had agreed to arbitration while ordering through Uber Eats, even though the family argued a minor child had clicked accept.¹⁷

The strategy has backfired at times. After Uber forced drivers into individual arbitration, an outside firm filed more than 31,500 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Uber Eats customers, generating millions in filing fees; in 2022 a court rejected Uber’s attempt to block the American Arbitration Association from enforcing its fee schedule.¹⁷

The 2016 Data Breach Aftermath

In 2016, hackers accessed roughly 57 million Uber user records and 600,000 drivers’ license numbers. Instead of disclosing, then-Chief Security Officer Joseph Sullivan paid the hackers $100,000 in bitcoin for non-disclosure agreements and concealed the breach from the FTC, which was already investigating an earlier 2014 breach.¹⁸ New management disclosed the breach in November 2017. A federal jury convicted Sullivan in October 2022 of obstructing FTC proceedings and misprision of a felony, and in May 2023 Judge William H. Orrick sentenced him to three years of probation, 200 hours of community service, and a $50,000 fine.¹⁹

Uber entered a non-prosecution agreement with the DOJ in July 2022, admitting its personnel failed to report the breach.²⁰ The company separately paid $148 million to settle with all 50 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia.²¹ A 2018 FTC settlement requires a comprehensive privacy program and biennial third-party audits for 20 years.²²

Uber’s RICO Suits Against Plaintiffs’ Firms

Uber has also gone on offense. In California, the company filed a civil RICO suit against Knight Law Group, Altman Law Group, and Wirtz Law. In November 2025, U.S. District Judge Michelle Williams Court in the Central District of California dismissed much of the case under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, which protects the right to petition courts. By early 2026, the targeted firms had moved to dismiss what remained, calling the suit retaliatory. Uber has filed similar RICO actions against plaintiffs’ firms in New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida.²³

1
Justia. Uber Technologies, Inc. v. United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, No. 23-3445
2
Helbock Law. Forced Arbitration in Rideshare Sexual Assault Cases
3
Bloomberg Law. Uber Defeats Passenger Sexual Assault Case in Bellwether Trial
4
CNN. Uber Sexual Assault Case Verdict
5
Bloomberg Law. Attorney in Uber Assault Cases Fined $30,000 for Data Misuse
6
FTC. FTC Takes Action Against Uber for Deceptive Billing and Cancellation Practices
7
FTC. FTC, States File Amended Complaint Against Uber for Deceptive Billing and Cancellation Practices
8
DOJ. United States v. Uber Technologies, Inc.
9
CourtListener. United States v. Uber Technologies, Inc. Docket
10
NY1. Uber, Lyft Drivers to Receive Big Payouts From Historic AG Settlement
11
NY AG. Attorney General James Urges Uber and Lyft Drivers to File Claims to Receive Funds From $328 Million Settlement
12
California DIR. Lawsuits Against Uber and Lyft
13
CalMatters. Prop 22 California Gig Work Law Upheld
14
SHRM. Uber Signs $8.4 Million Settlement for Driver Misclassification
15
Uber. Injury Protection Insurance
16
Elefterakis, Elefterakis & Panek. $2,850,000 Settlement for an Uber Driver Injured in a Car Accident in NYC
17
NPR. Uber Car Crash Lawsuit and Uber Eats Arbitration Terms
18
DOJ USAO NDCA. Former Chief Security Officer of Uber Convicted of Federal Charges for Covering Up Data Breach
19
Arnold & Porter. Ex-Uber CSO Sentenced to Probation
20
DOJ USAO NDCA. Uber Enters Non-Prosecution Agreement
21
DC OAG. AG Racine Reaches $148 Million Nationwide Settlement With Uber
22
FTC. Federal Trade Commission Gives Final Approval to Settlement With Uber
23
Law.com. Calif. Lawyers Want Uber Case Tossed as New Company Files RICO Suit