Uber found liable in sexual assault case and ordered to pay $8.5 million
[February 07, 2026] By
WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS and HALLIE GOLDEN
A federal jury this week found Uber to be legally responsible in a 2023
case of sexual assault — ordering the rideshare giant to pay $8.5
million to a woman who said one of its drivers raped her during a trip
using the platform.
The verdict, reached Thursday in Arizona, follows years of criticism
against Uber's safety record, much of which spans from thousands of
incidents of sexual assault reported by both passengers and drivers.
Because Uber drivers are categorized as gig workers — working as
contractors, rather than company employees — the platform has long
maintained it's not liable for their misconduct.
“Uber spends billions of dollars to make all riders feel like they’re
(riding) with Uber. And that is what the jury found yesterday," Ellyn
Hurd, one of the attorneys representing plaintiff Jaylynn Dean, told The
Associated Press. The verdict determined the driver is an “apparent
agent” of the company, she explained, making Uber liable for the
assault.
Hurd added her team was “very proud of our client for facing such a
huge, powerful company.” And the jury's decision could carry significant
impact for similar cases, she noted.
Uber said it plans to appeal. And beyond apparent agency, the jury
didn't find the company to be negligent or have defective safety
systems.
The verdict “affirms that Uber acted responsibly and has invested
meaningfully in rider safety,” spokesperson Andrew Hasbun said in a
statement. He added that the award was “far below” the full amount
initially requested from the plaintiff's lawyers.
The lawsuit stems from an November 2023 Uber ride when Dean, who was 19
at the time, 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 her.
The driver was not named or part of this civil suit.
The lawsuit argued Uber had long known its drivers were assaulting
passengers, and that it didn’t implement the safety measures needed to
stop this from happening. The complaint, filed in December 2023, called
the company's response “slow and inadequate” — putting “the lives and
well-being of its customers at grave risk.”
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The Uber logo appears above a trading post on the floor of the New
York Stock Exchange, Aug. 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
 Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Uber
says it has taken multiple steps in efforts to improve safety on its
platform, 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.
The company maintains that sexual assault reports have decreased
substantially over the years. According to reports from Uber, 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 the platform says represented 0.0001% of
total trips nationwide.
Still, critics stress that ridesharing companies need to develop
more guardrails to protect consumers and take clearer responsibility
in cases of assault.
Sarah London, another attorney representing Dean, stated that
Thursday's verdict validates “survivors who have come forward at
great personal risk to demand accountability against Uber.” Still,
she said the work is far from over.
While grateful for the outcome on behalf of her client, she noted
that thousands of other cases remain and "justice will ultimately be
measured by the outcomes of the ongoing litigation and whether
meaningful safety reforms are implemented to protect passengers
going forward.”
The AP does not typically name people who have said they were
sexually abused, unless they have given consent through their
attorneys or come forward publicly, as Dean has done through her
lawyers.
______
AP Writer Josh Funk contributed to this report.
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