The estate of a deceased Uber driver blames the company and others for her death after she was killed by a passenger.
Edna Dillon, the mother of Yolanda Dillon filed a federal lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc., Rasier LLC and Rasier-PA LLC.
The plaintiff says her late daughter was killed by a passenger she picked up through the Uber app. Despite being aware of the high risk of violent attacks on drivers by passengers, the complaint claims Uber failed to implement necessary safety measures to protect its drivers.
Yolanda Dillon, a 54-year-old who also was a budget analyst with the New Orleans Police Department, was matched with a violent perpetrator through the Uber app. The assailant later told police detectives, "I didn't pick her. Uber picked her." The complaint accuses Uber of neglecting its duty to protect its drivers from known and foreseeable risks by failing to implement simple and effective safety measures.
The lawsuit also criticizes Uber's business model which shifts costs associated with doing business onto its drivers and evades regulations governing other for-hire driving services. It further points out that while Uber has developed sophisticated data collection and analysis tools to screen out potentially violent or dangerous drivers, it failed to employ basic identity-verification technology to screen out the customer who murdered Ms. Dillon.
As a result of these alleged failures on part of Uber, the complaint says Dillon was viciously attacked and killed by a passenger she had just dropped off at his destination. The incident was filmed and posted on Facebook Live.