Lyft Class Action Says New York Riders Overcharged For E-Z Pass Tolls

A proposed class action lawsuit alleges Lyft has regularly overcharged tolls to New York passengers and seeks nearly $60 million in damages.

Lyft is a privately held transportation company based in San Francisco. Its mobile application facilitates peer-to-peer ride sharing by connecting passengers who need a ride with drivers who have a car.

Lyft portrays itself as an innovative 21st Century community-based business, specifically branding its business model as a “peer to peer transportation platform.”

Lyft uses mobile technology to run a traditional for-hire delivery service, arranging rides for passengers on non-fixed routes in exchange for compensation.

Lyft presently operates in over 200 U.S. cities, including New York City since 2014.

The proposed class action lawsuit, filed in New York federal court by plaintiff Josh Applebaum, alleges that Lyft illegally charged riders in the New York City metropolitan area substantial premiums for travel on tolled roads, such as tolls at all bridges and tunnels, without notice.

Applebaum says he took a Lyft ride between Manhattan and Newark Airport in New Jersey. The Lyft driver used the Holland Tunnel for this route and had an E-Z Pass transponder in his vehicle.

Although there was no toll for the return crossing from New Jersey into New York, Lyft charged Applebaum $15 for the toll, which was the full cash rate. However, Applebaum contends this trip was during peak hours and the E-Z Pass discounted toll rate was $12.50.

According to the complaint, “Lyft unfairly and improperly increases Lyft’s profits by directly benefiting from each ride consumers take through tolled roads by receiving 20% of the total ride plus additional fees.”

Specifically, the lawsuit argues the ride-hailing service regularly charged passengers the higher “cash” rate for tolls in the city instead of the lower “E-Z Pass” rate, which the New York Taxi & Limousine Commission mandates should be charged.

“Although Lyft encourages its drivers to use E-Z Pass to pay for tolls, Lyft, without notice, charges its customers the non-discounted cash price for the toll, even though the driver has not paid that amount,” the Lyft class action states.

The lawsuit further claims that Lyft deceives customers into believing that the tolls for which they have been charged are merely a “pass-through” charge by Lyft and to prevent customers from discovering the overcharge, Lyft’s receipts purposely do not provide any information as to whether the toll was charged at the discounted E-Z pass rate or the full cash rate.

Instead, the receipt “creates the impression that the rider is reimbursing Lyft for the amount paid by the driver,” since the receipt only lists the name of the tolled bridge or tunnel and the toll price Lyft charges the customer.

With an average of about $2.46 per toll, multiplied by thousands of rides per day, the complaint estimates that this alleged discrepancy totals nearly $60 million in overcharges just in the past two years.

Of that, 20 percent of the overcharges would have been gone to Lyft itself, with drivers receiving the remaining 80 percent.

Applebaum seeks to represent a Class of “individuals and entities in the United States who were charged by, and paid to, Lyft the full cash price for a toll paid by a Lyft driver using an E-Z Pass transponder incurred as the result of travel on a Lyft for-hire care for travel across any of the fifteen bridges and tunnels in the New York City metropolitan area that charge tolls.”

Applebaum is represented by Lee A. Weiss of Berns Weiss LLP; Allyson L. Stein, Eli Fuchsberg, Bradley Zimmerman, and Nealraj S. Bhushan of The Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Firm LLP.

The Lyft Toll Overcharges Class Action Lawsuit is Applebaum v. Lyft Inc., Case No. 1:16-cv-07062-JGK, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.