Uber to pay $178 mn to taxi operators in classaction settlement in Australia
Uber has agreed to pay A$271.8 million ($178 million) to settle a lawsuit brought by Australian taxi operators and drivers, who say they lost income when the ridehailing company moved into the country, a law firm said on Monday.
The settlement is Australia’s fifthlargest, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers said in a statement.
The classaction suit was filed in 2019 in the Supreme Court of Victoria state on behalf of more than 8,000 taxi and hirecar owners and drivers, accusing Uber of breaking laws requiring taxis and hire cars to be licensed.
Uber’s 2012 arrival in the market took revenue from licensed taxi drivers while destroying the value of the licences they had paid for, as per the lawsuit.
Uber had said it never knowingly broke the law.
“Uber fought tooth and nail at every point along the way,” Maurice Blackburn Principal Michael Donelly said in a statement.
“After years of refusing to do the right thing by those we say they harmed,
Uber has blinked,” he said.
An Uber spokesperson said in an email the company contributed to statelevel taxi compensation schemes since 2018 “and with today’s proposed settlement, we put these legacy issues firmly in our past”. Uber did not disclose the proposed settlement in its response.
Former lawmaker and taxi driver Rod Barton, a member of the class action, said the settlement vindicated his belief Uber had knowingly avoided the country’s taxi licensing rules. “They knew fully well they were required to have their drivers and their vehicles fully licensed,” Mr. Barton told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.