California court reverses summary judgment in favor of Uber and its independent driver.

The plaintiff claimed he was injured when he was knocked off the back of a garbage truck after striking the open rear door of an Uber vehicle. A rear rider in the Uber vehicle had just opened the door into traffic to exit the vehicle. In the lawsuit, the plaintiff claimed the driver of the Uber vehicle negligently parked along the street in front of a hotel rather than in the hotel’s driveway. The trial court granted summary judgment for the defendants, and the plaintiff appealed. The appellate court reversed, finding that the defendants owed a general duty of care in choosing where and how to offload passengers. The appellate court further concluded there remained questions of fact as to whether the Uber driver breached his duty of care by parking along the street to offload his riders instead of pulling into the hotel’s driveway. As to causation, the court found that the rider’s negligence in opening the rear door into traffic was foreseeable, so it was improper to enter summary judgment on the ground that the rider’s negligence was a superseding cause of the incident. This case illustrates the lengths to which some courts will go to allow access to a deep pocket, and it stands as a warning to the rideshare industry that dropping riders off on the street may open the door to liability (pun intended). The issue of whether Uber can be held vicariously liable for the independent driver’s negligence was not addressed.

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