Tort Law vs. Privacy: Ride-Share Services May Have Duty to Prevent Anonymous Riders

So the Missouri Court of Appeals concludes, in allowing a negligence/design defect case to proceed against Lyft, based on a driver's having been murdered by riders who "fraudulently and anonymously request[ed]" a ride.

Yesterday's Missouri Court of Appeals decision in Ameer v. Lyft, Inc. reversed a grant for summary judgment for Lyft, allowing plaintiff's claim to go forward on product liability and negligence theories; here's part of the analysis (from Judge Robert Clayton, joined by Judge Michael Wright and, as to the negligence claim, Judge John Torbitzky). The trial court granted summary judgment from Lyft, but the appellate court reversed, reasoning (in part) that Lyft's allowing people to "fraudulently and anonymously request[]" a ride may be legally actionable. Lyft "purportedly failed to contain multiple protections for its drivers including," among other things, "adequate data verification technology pertaining to a passenger's age, identity, or violent propensity":

Plaintiff avers Lyft implemented measures in states other than Missouri requiring purported passengers using the Lyft App with an anonymous form of payment "to provide a driver's license, state ID, or another type of document that shows their name or mailing address," allowing Lyft to discover that a "fictitious person who set up the Lyft account d[oes] not exist[ ] and that the form of payment [i]s unverified." Notably, to allow Lyft to be foreclosed from liability in Missouri for omissions in the design of the Lyft App which were allegedly implemented in other states would incentivize Lyft and other mobile application developers to: (1) not put protections in place for Lyft drivers and customers in Missouri; and (2) eliminate protections for its users in other states….

Plaintiff's petition specifically avers Lyft implemented measures in its App in other states requiring purported passengers using a Lyft account with an anonymous form of payment "to provide a driver's license, state ID, or another type of document that shows their name or mailing address," allowing Lyft to discover that a "fictitious person who set up the Lyft account d[oes] not exist[ ] and that the form of payment [i]s unverified" ….

Plaintiff's petition sufficiently alleges Lyft should have realized through special facts within its knowledge that its omissions exposed Plaintiff's Son to an unreasonable risk of harm through the conduct of third parties, like Son's perpetrators, who were able to use the Lyft App to fraudulently and anonymously request a ride.

I'd love to hear what people think about this, and the broader pressure that negligence law (and, relatedly, product design defect law) imposes on companies to forbid anonymous uses. I wrote about this back in 2014, in Tort Law vs. Privacy, but of course surveillance and identification technology has improved markedly since then, which suggests that tort law may impose yet more pressure to use it.

Comments

[John F. Carr]

I never had to show an ID or a credit card before I got into a taxi and murdered the driver. From quickly skimming the decision, a taxi ride is not a product while a phone app is a product. Even though calling for a cab is functionally the same as calling for a Lyft. I agree with the dissent that if anything is defective it is not the app.

[Rossami]

Is there a duty of care to verify identities of traditional taxi customers or to affirmatively prevent cab driver murders? No? Then there is no (or should be no) magical 'duty of care' for this situation either.

[Krayt]

Well that doesn't funnel money into a lawyer's pocket!

[Ridgeway]

I only read the summary, but it sounded like Lyft was verifying identities in other jurisdictions, but not in that part of Missouri (I don't know why). As I distantly recall from Torts class, defendants can screw themselves by doing this -- they would have been better off not offering the verification at all.

As an aside, that is why states changed their laws to protect manufacturers from introducing safety features in new product models -- under traditional tort/PL analysis, those improvements could be taken as evidence that the earlier versions were defective.