)
Rideshare giant Uber has agreed to pay Australian taxi and hire car drivers $271.8 million for loss of income and the decimation of the value of their licences following the US company’s “aggressive” entry to the domestic market 12 years ago.
The settlement, said to be the result of one of the most successful class actions ever brought against Uber, ends a “gruelling” five-year battle brought by legal firm Maurice Blackburn on behalf of 8,000 taxi and hire car owners and drivers.
“Uber 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,” says Maurice Blackburn Lawyers principal Michael Donelly.
“But 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.”
Donelly says the Uber payout represents one of the top-five class action settlements in Australian legal history “putting beyond any doubt that Uber has been held to account for its actions”.
“This case succeeded where so many others have failed,” he says.
“In Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, cases were brought against governments and all of them failed. What our group members asked for was not another set of excuses – but an outcome – and today we have delivered it for them.”
The value of taxi licences in Australia have been decimated since the arrival of Uber into the market in 2012, with the losses reflecting similar stories for taxi-cab owners around the world.
The average taxi licence plate in NSW in 2011 was worth more than $400,000 and more than halved within the first few years of Uber entering the Australian market, with the ongoing impact hitting sole operators the hardest.
Former taxi-driver, operator and licence owner Nick Andrianakis was lead plaintiff in the class action against Uber. Andrianakis, who spent four decades in the industry, was forced to walk away from his cab in the aftermath of competition from Uber.
“We are extremely proud that thousands of people put their faith in us and Nick Andrianakis and allowed us to do what we do best – holding to account major organisations that we say inflicted mass wrongs on people,” says Donelly.
“And we are extremely proud to have succeeded today in holding Uber to account, in securing the fifth-largest ever class action recovery in Australian history for our clients, a $271.8 million sum that will finally put real money back into the accounts of people who have been devasted.”
Get our daily business news
Sign up to our free email news updates.
)
)
)
)
)
