Uber must share pickups, fee details, Florida court rules

Uber has secrets it doesn’t want to share, but a Florida appeals court says the information has to be made public.

Broward County gave Uber permission in 2015 to pick up customers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The company, which does business there under the name Rasier-DC LLC, supplies the county with monthly reports on the number of trips it makes from the airport and the amount of airport fees it pays.

Yellow Cab, one of the local taxi cab companies that tried to keep Uber out of the airport business, decided it wanted a look at that information to see how much business Uber was doing.

But when Yellow Cab put in a public records request with the county, it was told the information was considered a “trade secret” not covered by the state’s public records laws. The county gave the company its Uber reports with all the information blacked out.

When Yellow Cab took the county to court in February 2016, Circuit Judge Sandra Perlman first agreed with the county and said it didn’t have to provide the redacted information, which detailed the number of Uber pickups and dropoffs, the fees paid, the date, time and exact locations of the trips, and the first three digits of the driver’s tag number.

After being requested to take another look at the issue, Perlman determined that the aggregate number of pickups and the fees paid were not trade secrets after all and should be released. The district court of appeal agreed. “Nothing indicates the fees or total pickups provide an advantage to Yellow Cab or that Uber derives independent economic value from keeping that information secret,” the court ruled.

The ruling was a small victory for taxi-cab companies, which have seen business dwindle with the increasing popularity of ride-sharing business like Uber and Lyft. The taxi companies provide the same information to the county and it was never considered a trade secret for them.

“The public deserves to know the impact of ride-hails to the community, especially as it relates to congestion at the airport,” said John Boit, a spokesman for the Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association. “A level playing field is critical for the success of local taxi companies competing” with Uber and similar businesses.

Uber officials were not ready to say Wednesday if they would accept the district court’s decision or appeal it.

“We are disappointed with today’s ruling, and we are evaluating our options,” Uber’s Florida spokesman Javi Correoso said.