Uber, the San Francisco-based tech giant, remains the world’s largest rideshare company. But Uber’s safety has increasingly come into question. Beginning around the mid‑2010s, riders across the United States began filing sexual assault lawsuits. Uber passengers accused the company of building a business model that put vulnerable riders at risk, then failing to fix obvious safety problems even as reports of sexual violence continued to mount. FindLaw looks at how those allegations led to a nationwide multi-district litigation (MDL) and how the first test case has just played out before the jury.
Inside the Allegations
The complaints allege sexual assault or harassment by Uber drivers, and that these assaults were enabled by systemic safety failures in Uber’s ride-sharing platform. Uber drivers are independent contractors who apply online in minutes.
The underlying claim is that Uber designed a ride-hailing system that puts largely female, often intoxicated riders alone in private vehicles with minimally vetted drivers. The company had extensive control over the app, data, branding, and the overall transportation system, but it allegedly focused on growing as quickly as possible and maintaining a large pool of drivers. In doing so, Uber purportedly ignored safety concerns and allowed people who shouldn’t have been on the platform at all to drive. It’s also accused of dragging its feet on tougher background checks and ignoring or downplaying reports of sexual assault.
Even as more people reported sexual assaults and harassment, the plaintiffs say Uber chose not to carefully track these incidents. They claim Uber intentionally avoided building a strong system to count and study sexual misconduct on its platform. According to them, this helped Uber keep the full scope of the problem out of view.
Plaintiffs also argue that when Uber did learn about rideshare sexual assaults, it downplayed the information. At the same time, Uber continued to advertise itself as a very safe way to get home. The marketing especially focused on women and people who had been drinking, who are more vulnerable to sexual violence.
In their court filings, the plaintiffs point to Uber’s own U.S. Safety Reports. Those reports say that 99.9998% of trips in 2021–2022 ended without the serious safety incidents covered in the report. They also list safety features like background checks and in‑app tools. Plaintiffs say these reports show two things: first, that Uber knew about thousands of sexual assault reports; second, that Uber used selected statistics and careful messaging to “launder” its public image on safety.
Thousands of Cases Centralized
Because many federal lawsuits around the country raised the same basic questions (what Uber knew, how it checked drivers, what safety measures it used, and how it handled complaints), a national judicial panel stepped in. That panel grouped the cases together into a multi-district litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of California (In re: Uber Technologies Passenger Sexual Assault Litigation). Centralizing the cases lets a single judge oversee shared discovery and pretrial rulings, rather than having many judges do the same work separately in similar cases.
In the last couple of years, the MDL has ballooned in size as it moved into more advanced phases. In early 2025, the MDL encompassed roughly 1,700 sexual assault cases; now, there are more than 3,600. This reflects a steady wave of new filings by survivors who might once have brought stand‑alone cases in different courts, but who are now being funneled into a single coordinated proceeding that is gathering common evidence and moving toward test trials, called “bellwether” trials.
In a giant MDL like this, it’s impossible to try every case individually in a reasonable time. Bellwether trials give the judge and the parties real‑world data on how juries respond to key evidence, legal theories, and defenses in a handful of representative cases. That information helps both sides value the remaining claims and often drives serious settlement talks or structured resolution programs, instead of letting the docket sit in an endless pretrial phase.
Jaylynn Dean, the First Case to Try
The first of those bellwether cases was brought by Jaylynn Dean, an Oklahoma woman who says she was assaulted, battered, and harassed by the Uber driver she was matched with through the app during a ride in Arizona. Dean’s lawsuit tells a specific story, but it sits squarely inside the broader pattern described in the MDL.
Like the countless other cases, Dean’s complaint highlights Uber’s internal culture. She points to episodes involving senior executives and employees that she says reflect a deep, company‑wide disregard for women’s safety and a tolerance of sexual harassment inside Uber itself. Last month, the trial for Dean’s case in federal court in Arizona began. and lasted four weeks. Although it was part of the federal MDL centered in the Northern District of California, it was remanded for trial to the district where the incident and underlying lawsuit were properly venued (Phoenix).
A federal jury heard testimony from Dean, multiple experts, and senior Uber executives (including CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and former CEO Travis Kalanick) about what happened on her November 2023 ride and how Uber treats rider safety. Last Thursday, they delivered a verdict.
The Verdict
The jurors found that the driver raped Dean while acting as Uber’s “apparent agent.” They held Uber liable on that basis, but at the same time, they rejected her separate negligence and design‑defect claims. The jury awarded her $8.5 million in compensatory damages and no punitive damages.
Dean’s lawyers cast the jury award as a powerful signal for the thousands of remaining cases. Uber, by contrast, argued that the verdict showed its safety systems were not found defective, even though the company was still on the hook for what the driver did.
Dean’s verdict is just one case, but it now sets the tone for thousands of similar lawsuits. Her win shows juries are willing to tag Uber with liability for incidents of sexual assault, even without finding its entire safety system defective.
Related Resources:
- Sexual Assault Victims Suing Uber Score a Preliminary Legal Victory (FindLaw’s Courtside)
- The Hidden Risk of Your Next Uber Ride (FindLaw’s Law and Daily Life)
- Class Action Cases (FindLaw’s Learn About the Law)
