It’s a living hail!

Cabbie suit claims apps are driving him out

E-HAIL APPS and burdensome rules for yellow cabs have made taxi medallions practically worthless, a driver suing the city and taxi regulators told the Daily News on Tuesday.

Marcelino (Nino) Hervias, a yellow cab driver and medallion owner from New Jersey, filed suit this week with Queens medallion owner William Guerra to force the city to come up with a way to pull the industry out of its financial straits.

“They have created totally unfair competition,” Hervias, 58, said. “We are competing with somebody else to do what we do, with no (medallion).”

The suit argues the city and the Taxi & Limousine Commission are bound by a rule to create standards ensuring medallion owners “remain financially stable.”

“The purchasers felt they had the city and the law behind them, to protect them, that the valuations wouldn’t be so wildly erratic,” said the medallion owners’ attorney, Brad Gerstman, who’s been a courtroom adversary to the city since the rise of e-hail apps. “This suit is the first of its kind as it pertains to the taxi industry.”

Hervias (photo) says the city allows app-employed drivers to dominate the streets and provide rides similar to taxis, but with none of the financial and legal burdens he faces as a medallion owner and driver. Now, he has to hustle harder and longer to get enough passengers to cover his $3,000 monthly medallion loan repayments and expenses. He estimates his business is down 30% and he has to work a few extra hours each shift to get 20 fares a day. “We have to be very aggressive now, which is the stress we are living in today,” Hervias said. The medallions’ cost has dropped from their $1 million heyday before Uber and e-hail apps reigned. Sales these days hover in the mid-six figures; in March, a medallion sold for $241,000.

Hervias, who has sons ages 19 and 13, dreamed his medallion would be worth about $2 million when he planned to retire.

Now, he doesn’t see a market for his medallion because lending is tight.

“The financial institutions, they’re not lending a dime if you want to buy a medallion,” he said. “The only medallion you can buy is the ones the bank have in foreclosure.”

Representatives for Mayor de Blasio and the city’s Corporation Counsel did not respond to a request for comment.

A TLC spokesman declined to comment.