Taxi companies seek getaway from Uber price-fixing class action

Filed 53m ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

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Medieval Loop One

Alexander Nakarada · creatorchords.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Agnieszka Kwiecień, Nova · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Taxi companies Curb Mobility, Flywheel, Creative Mobile Technologies and ARRO asked a federal judge in San Jose to ship a price-fixing class action to New York, where plaintiff Brendan Kretschmer lives and used the Uber app. Kretschmer alleges the cab companies colluded with Uber to inflate ride prices across the platform, but sued only the taxi firms rather than Uber itself, reportedly to dodge Uber's arbitration clause.

The dispute turned on whether Uber's user agreement, which mentions arbitration for undefined "third parties," sweeps in taxi companies that aren't named in the contract. Judge Virginia DeMarchi didn't tip her hand but did call Uber, absent from the defendant list despite being the obvious center of the alleged scheme, the "elephant in the room."

No ruling was issued; DeMarchi said a written order would come "as soon as I can."

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

You can build a case around a company for two hours and never once list it as a defendant, and apparently nobody in the room finds that strange except the judge. That elephant isn't hiding, it's just sitting in the front row while everyone argues about the furniture. Whichever coast ends up hearing this, somebody ought to eventually ask the animal itself to testify.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Medieval Loop One · Alexander Nakarada · CC BY 4.0

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