The Volokh Conspiracy
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Plaintiffs Try to Sue Uber Because Their Father Was Killed by a Passenger Who Used a Lyft Platform
The plaintiffs alleged that Uber knew the passenger had committed two carjackings about a month before, should have warned Lyft about that. (The killer used the same e-mail address for both his Lyft and Uber accounts.) The father drove for both Uber and Lyft, but the killer called him using the Lyft app. No liability, as a matter of law, Judge Stephen Clark (E.D. Mo.) concluded Friday in Newman v. Uber Technologies, Inc., denying plaintiffs leave to amend their complaint on the grounds that such an amendment would be futile:
In Ameer [a previous Missouri case], Rochelle Ameer sued Lyft, a rideshare platform, after a rider "fraudulently and anonymously requested through Lyft's mobile ridesharing application" a ride from Ameer's son and killed him. Ameer asserted, among other claims, a negligence claim based on a wrongful-death theory…. [T]he Missouri Court of Appeals [held the case could go forward].
The complaint in Ameer alleged that two minors, who were "supposed to be ineligible to order rides through the Lyft [a]pp, met and conspired together to use the [a]pp to carjack a Lyft driver." The minors requested a ride through the Lyft app, and Ameer's son accepted the request. After Ameer's son arrived, the minors announced a robbery, pulled guns on Ameer's son, attempted to force him out of the car, and eventually shot and killed him. Ameer alleged that the minors had previously, on multiple occasions, carried out the same carjacking scheme that they carried out on Ameer's son. Ameer also alleged that "Lyft knew or should have known that multiple rideshare drivers had been assaulted, attacked, and carjacked as a result of the same fraudulent scheme."
In addressing the negligence claims, the Missouri Court of Appeals first acknowledged the general rule that "[a] duty to protect against the criminal acts of third parties is generally not recognized because such activities are rarely foreseeable." But the court recognized that, where "a victim is injured at a location other than the defendant's premises," two exceptions to the general rule exist. First, a duty exists where "the defendant 'should realize through special facts within his knowledge…that an act or omission exposes someone to an unreasonable risk of harm through the conduct of another.'" Second, a duty exists where "the defendant 'has brought the victim into contact or association with a person or persons whom he knows or should know to be particularly liable to commit criminal acts, and under circumstances [that] afford a peculiar opportunity or temptation for such misconduct.'"
The Missouri Court of Appeals held that the first exception applied to the facts of Ameer. The court explained that Ameer had alleged that "Lyft failed to utilize readily available and known measures" that would have protected Ameer's son. Those alleged omissions included (1) Lyft's failure to train Ameer's son "to identify particularly dangerous situations or people," (2) Lyft's failure to offer Ameer's son "security measures in his vehicle such as a surveillance camera or a physical barrier between the front and backseats," (3) Lyft's failure "to implement basic anti-fraud and identity-verification measures in its [a]pp that Lyft had implemented in other states." Assuming the truth of Ameer's allegations, the court reasoned that her petition established that "Lyft should have realized through special facts within its knowledge that its omissions exposed" Ameer's son "to an unreasonable risk of harm through the conduct of third parties, like [the] perpetrators, who were able to use the Lyft [a]pp to fraudulently and anonymously request a ride." Thus, the court held that the first exception applied.
Relying on the same allegations, the court held that the second exception applied, too. That's because the petition alleged that the Lyft app "brought" Ameer's son "into contact with his perpetrators." And the petition alleged that "Lyft knew or should have known" that the minors were "particularly liable to commit criminal acts" while Lyft could have employed "measures that would have arguably protected" Ameer's son "from harm."
The Court acknowledges that some factual similarities exist between the allegations in Ameer's complaint and the allegations in Plaintiffs' proposed amended complaint. First, like in Ameer, where Ameer alleged that the minors had carried out a similar carjacking scheme "multiple times" before Ameer's son's murder, Plaintiffs here allege that Wilson "committed at least two carjackings" of rideshare drivers before he murdered Newman. And second, Ameer alleged that the minors used Lyft's app "to fraudulently and anonymously request a ride by utilizing a false name, a false email address, and an anonymous form of payment," while Plaintiffs here allege that, when Wilson committed his carjackings, he too used an alias.
But at the end of the day, the distinctions between Ameer and this case carry far more weight on the issue of whether a federal court sitting in diversity should create a heretofore nonexistent duty to the contractors or employees of a competitor. Most notably, in Ameer, the fatal ride took place on the defendant's platform. But here, Newman's murder took place not on Uber's platform, but on Lyft's. That makes the second exception that Ameer applied inapplicable here, because Uber didn't bring Newman "into contact with" Wilson.
The difference-in-platform distinction makes a meaningful difference as to the first exception, too, because the Ameer duty would lack a limiting principle if that duty applied to this case, and the policy implications of extending liability to the contractors of a competitor are on a different plane than imposing liability on one's own contractor or employee. The proposed scope of the duties between the two cases illustrates this. In Ameer, Ameer tried to hold Lyft liable based on Lyft's (1) failure to train Ameer's son "to identify particularly dangerous situations or people," (2) failure to offer Ameer's son "security measures in his vehicle," and (3) failure to require its passengers using "an anonymous form of payment" to provide identification before requesting a ride. That is, Ameer sought to hold Lyft responsible for its failures to police its own rideshare platform. Surely, that duty contains a limiting principle to ensure that the duty doesn't swallow the general no-duty-to-protect-against-third-party-criminal-acts rule: your duty ends where your platform ends, or so it would seem. In any event, it will be up to the Missouri courts to determine whether to extend Ameer beyond its confines, but this Court has no warrant to do so.
But Plaintiffs' proposed duty here contains no such limit. Plaintiffs argue that Uber breached a duty because it "decid[ed] not to share information about…Wilson with Lyft." That duty has no limit. Sure, Uber and Lyft both operate in the rideshare industry. But, under Plaintiffs' theory, why would Uber's duty stop there? If it's foreseeable that "rideshare users who commit violence on one app will commit violence on the other app," then why would it not be just as foreseeable that Wilson would carjack and murder a taxicab driver? Or a limousine driver? Or a bus driver? Or a generous soul who decides to pick up a hitchhiker?
Under Plaintiffs' theory, Uber would have had an obligation to share information about Wilson not just with Lyft, but essentially with anyone, anywhere who might come into contact with Wilson. In sum, "[t]he burden of imposing this ill-defined and undisputedly broad duty is simply too great in this context."
Angela L. Angotti, Clayton J. Callen, Paige Lauren Cheung, and Paul Augusto Alarcon (Bowman and Brooke LLP) represent defendants.
