Uber Technologies Inc. has taken the extraordinary step of petitioning an appeals court to reverse coordination of what could be thousands of lawsuits from passengers alleging its drivers sexually assaulted them.
In a Nov. 10 petition for a writ of mandamus, Uber asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to vacate last month’s order from the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation transferring the sexual assault cases to U.S. District Senior Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California. Uber cited “different laws and regulations in different states” and “overwhelmingly individualized factual questions” as reasons for its petition, which, although allowed, is extremely rare in multidistrict litigation.
