Uber Drivers Win Big in Safe Rides Fee Class Action Lawsuit

Uber drivers have won a favorable judgment and Class certification in a class action lawsuit over the company’s Safe Rides fee.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers decided cross motions for summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs – four Uber drivers who say they were improperly charged Safe Rides fees that should have been charged to their riders.

The judge concluded that defendant Uber Technologies Inc. breached its agreement with its drivers by deducting the $1 Safe Rides fee from the $4 minimum fare charged for the shortest UberX rides.

Judge Rogers also granted certification for a plaintiff Class that will cover Uber drivers who provided minimum fare rides that were subject to the Safe Rides fee.

Safe Rides is a marketing effort to assure riders that their Uber driver has been vetted through a background check. Named plaintiffs Matthew Clark, Ryan Cowden, Dominicus Rooijackers, and Jason Rosenberg claim Uber has been improperly forcing drivers like themselves to bear the cost of the Safe Rides program.

When Uber started Safe Rides in 2014, it told its drivers that the $1 fee would be collected from riders and would not reduce drivers’ earnings. Plaintiffs say the fee was applied correctly on rides that were long enough to be charged according to Uber’s ordinary fare calculations. The rider paid the fare plus the Safe Rides fee, and from that total Uber kept the fee and its cut of the fare.

But the plaintiffs say Uber misapplied the Safe Rides fee on rides short enough to trigger the $4 minimum fare. On those rides, plaintiffs claim, Uber took the Safe Rides fee out of the $4 minimum fare, in addition to the 20 percent cut the company normally gets.

Judge Rogers noted the agreement between Uber and drivers does not directly address how the Safe Rides fee will be assessed for minimum fare rides. But Judge Rogers determined that other provisions in the contract support an interpretation that the Safe Rides fee is not included in the minimum fare.

“By extracting $1.00 from the ‘Minimum Fare’ before making its remittance to drivers, Uber breached the plain terms of the Agreement,” the judge wrote. “As shown above, it was contractually entitled only to deduct 20% of the total amount charged on minimum fare rides, and the drivers were entitled to 80% of the same.”

As certified by the court, the plaintiff Class covers U.S. Uber drivers who entered into driver agreements from either 2013, June 2014, or November 2014, who opted out of arbitration in the most recent agreement they executed, and provided at least one minimum fare UberX ride to which a Safe Rides fee applied before Nov. 16, 2015.

The Class covers about 9,600 Uber drivers. The four named plaintiffs will serve as Class representatives.

The plaintiffs are represented by attorney John G. Crabtree of Crabtree & Auslander.

The Uber Safe Ride Fee Breach of Contract Class Action Lawsuit is Congdon, et al. v. Uber Technologies Inc., et al., Case No. 4:16-cv-02499, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.