Uber to face $1 billion legal challenge from angry Australian taxi drivers
Angry cabbies are coming for Uber with one of Australia’s largest class actions, claiming the international ride-sharing giant stole their livelihoods.
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Uber will be hit with a $1 billion lawsuit from angry cab driver
Cab drivers and private hire operators in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia have joined the Victorian class action.
More than 46,000 drivers and operators, some who have lost millions, will be eligible to file a claim against Uber.
UBER HIT WITH VICTORIAN LEGAL CLAIM
They will be seeking compensation for the period when Uber was operating illegally in Australia.
The company arrived in Australia in 2012, but was only legalised in Victoria in August last year.
Queensland and Western Australia gave the San Francisco giant the green light in 2016, while NSW signed off on Uber in 2015.
President of the Commercial Passenger Vehicle Association of Australia, Rod Barton, who was elected to the Victorian Upper House at the weekend election, has been behind the campaign to take on Uber.
“We are glad to have paved the way for these other states to come on board and join this action as a way to hold Uber to account for the damage it caused to our industry,” he said.
Maurice Blackburn has been co-ordinating the class action, to be filed within weeks.
An international litigation funder has backed the claim with at least $20 million already raised.
Uber has an estimated $120 billion value, which has emboldened the taxi drivers and operators to pursue the claim.
Maurice Blackburn won $494 million from power company SP Ausnet for failing to maintain a power line that started one of the deadly Black Saturday blazes in Victoria in 2009.
The claim against Uber, in terms of numbers of victims and the size of the losses, would at least double the Black Saturday claim, leaving the tech giant exposed to a $1 billion challenge.
Elizabeth O’Shea, a senior associate at Maurice Blackburn, said Uber “has caused extensive loss and damage to law-abiding taxi and hire car operators and licence holders across the country”.
“It was Uber that came in and exploited people by operating outside of regulations, it was Uber’s conduct that led to decimating losses suffered by our group members and for those reasons it is the multibillion-dollar company Uber and its associated entities that we are targeting in order to provide redress to those affected,” Ms O’Shea said.
“This class action will likely be one of the biggest in Australia on any measure — the number of people involved, the potential recovery of compensation for law-abiding operators and licence holders, and no doubt the extent of the fight we are anticipating from the defendants.”