Uber’s Liability in Rider Sexual Assault Case Goes to a Jury

Uber Technologies Inc.'s first bellwether trial examining whether the rideshare giant is liable for the sexual assault of a California woman who claims her Uber driver forcibly kissed and groped her in 2016 was sent to a San Francisco jury Thursday, following three weeks of evidence and testimony.

The jury could award the victim, proceeding in the case as Jessica C., millions of dollars in damages to compensate her for mental harm and PTSD from the incident. They group could also award millions more in punitive damages as a way to punish Uber.

It’s the first case to reach trial among thousands of lawsuit brought around the country, mostly by women riders, who claim the company refused to implement safety features like mandatory dashcams that would have prevented drivers from assaulting them.

Its outcome, along with several other trials, will impact the results for hundreds of other suits that were consolidated into this proceeding in California Superior Court, San Francisco County.

A similar consolidated federal court proceeding, also in San Francisco, contains thousands of sexual assault lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country, with the first trials set early next year.

Million-Dollar Award Request

Throughout the three-week trial, Jessica’s attorneys of Taylor & Ring argued that Uber’s campaign to grow as quickly as possible in its early years meant that it rejected any policy that would slow the increase of riders or drivers, even if it would provide safety to passengers.

The attorneys said passenger reports of sexual violence by drivers had increased almost every year since the company began keeping track in 2017.

The case involved a 2016 incident where Jessica, an 18-year-old first year student at University of California Santa Cruz at the time, was traveling home for winter break. She had been drinking in her dorm and took a bus from campus to downtown San Jose, where she called her first ever Uber to take her to the airport.

Jessica said that at some point during the ride, her driver Farrukh Kazim, pulled over on a side street, stopped the ride on his Uber app and began to forcibly kiss and grope her while she was in the front passenger seat. Jessica said she believed she would be raped or killed.

Jessica said she received a phone call during the incident, after which Kazim stopped and took her to the airport. She said she later received treatment for PTSD and dropped out of school the next semester.

“Your verdict is going to have a bigger impact on what happens to Jessica for the rest of her life any anything else that will happen,” her attorney John Taylor of Taylor & Ring said during closing statements.

He asked the jury to award Jessica up to $10.8 million for the harm she’s faced in the nine years since the incident. He said the jury should additionally award her up to $600,000 per year over the next decade, and up to $250,000 per year for the next twenty years after that. He didn’t ask the jury to deliver a specific punitive damages award, but said “it’s not enough to fine” such a large company.

Uber countered that incidents of sexual assault in Uber rides are extremely rare, amounting to an infinitesimal percentage of all rides.

Uber “did in fact use the highest care and vigilance of a cautions person,” Uber’s attorney Allison Brown of Kirkland & Ellis LLP said during closing statements. The company had run a multi-step background check on Kazim, which returned no criminal record, and he has received almost unanimous five-star reviews from previous riders.

Jessica also never reported the incident to Uber, and Kazim continued to drive and receive good reviews. The company only learned of the incident when she filed the lawsuit in 2021, after which it disabled Kazim’s account.

The case is In Re: Uber Rideshare Cases, Cal. Super. Ct., No. CJC21005188, 9/25/25.