Uber faces $8.5 million US verdict as questions over platform liability grow
Erin Bradbury - 25 February 2026
This month Uber was ordered to pay $8.5 million to a woman who was assaulted by a driver in the United States. A federal jury found Uber liable on the basis that driver was acting as an apparent agent of the company; an issue that arises in third-party liability claims.
Apparent authority is a US doctrine under which a principal (in this instance Uber) may be held responsible for the acts of an agent (the driver) if a third party reasonably believes that the agent was acting on the principal’s behalf. This applies regardless of whether authority was expressly or impliedly granted by the principal to its agent.
Applying this doctrine, the jury held Uber responsible for the driver’s actions while they provided a service through its platform. This resulted in compensatory damages to the claimant. This was the first case in a series of 20 bellwether cases against Uber; a tool used in the US to gauge jury reactions and set precedents for related cases, whilst at the same time preventing conflicting rulings.
Uber maintains that it should not be held liable for criminal acts committed by individuals who use its platform, emphasizing that drivers are independent contractors who are subject to background checks.
The jury trial in the US provides insight on whether a platform can be held responsible for the actions of individuals providing services, and it’s a relevant discussion in the UK too where there are instances of Uber having been held accountable. Although apparent authority is a US concept, there exists a similar doctrine known as vicarious liability within the UK.
In 2021 the Supreme Court in Uber BV v Aslam, an employment case, ruled that Uber drivers are workers, not independent contractors. This decision increases the transportation liability for Uber’s drivers’ conduct and challenges its position that it’s just a technology platform provider that connects passengers to drivers.
While Aslam was not a vicarious liability case, it formalises the worker classification which strengthens the first component of the vicarious liability test. The second component, whether the wrongful act is closely connected to the work, has not yet been explored in a UK judgement involving Uber. Whether that can be fully applied is yet to be seen.
To illustrate the UK context, Transport for London (TfL) has previously suspended the company’s license over failures in its reporting and safeguarding system. For instance, just alone in the period between late 2018 and early 2019 it was found that at least 14,000 fraudulent journeys had taken place.
In addition, back in 2019 in the first case of its kind, Uber reached out of court settlements with two women who were allegedly assaulted by the same driver. It was argued in civil proceedings that the company was liable, as it has a duty of care to protect its passengers because its drivers were employees.
Considering all of these developments and cases together, we can see that while conditions of platform liability in the UK and globally are still evolving, platforms such as Uber are increasingly being held responsible and scrutinised through the courts.