Law firm behind class action says outcome among most successful legal actions ever taken against the ride-sharing giant.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
Uber has agreed to pay $178m to settle a lawsuit with taxi and hire car drivers in Australia who say they lost earnings to the ride-hailing app, a law firm has announced.<\/p>\n
Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, which filed the class action on behalf of more than 8,000 taxi and hire car owners and drivers in 2019, said the outcome was one of the most successful legal actions ever taken against the ride-sharing giant.<\/p>\n
\u201cUber fought tooth and nail at every point along the way, every day, for the five years this has been on foot, trying at every turn to deny our group members any form of remedy or compensation for their losses,\u201d Maurice Blackburn Lawyers Principal Michael Donelly said in a statement on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut on the courtroom steps and after years of refusing to do the right thing by those we say they harmed, Uber has blinked, and thousands of everyday Australians joined together to stare down a global giant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be one of the top five class action settlements in Australian legal history \u2013 putting beyond any doubt that Uber has been held to account for its actions,\u201d Donelly added.<\/p>\n
Uber said that it had made \u201csignificant\u201d contributions to various state-level taxi compensation schemes since 2018 and that the settlement put \u201cthese legacy issues firmly in our past\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Uber started more than a decade ago, ridesharing regulations did not exist anywhere in the world, let alone Australia. Today is different, and Uber is now regulated in every state and territory across Australia, and governments recognise us as an important part of the nation\u2019s transport mix,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rise of ridesharing has grown Australia\u2019s overall point-to-point transport industry, bringing with it greater choice and improved experiences for consumers, as well as new earnings opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Australian workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Uber will continue focusing on helping the millions of Australians who use the service to \u201cget from A to B in a safe, affordable and reliable manner\u201d, the company added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Law firm behind class action says outcome among most successful legal actions ever taken against the ride-sharing giant. Uber has agreed to pay $178m to settle a lawsuit with taxi and hire car drivers in Australia who say they lost earnings to the ride-hailing app, a law firm has announced. Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, which filed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}