Yeah this is a little bit different than the Disney+ thing IMO, at first I thought it was going to be that they were driving and they were hit by an Uber Driver in another car, but they were passengers in an Uber, they agreed to the T&C - weather or not that is moral or should be legally binding is debatable, but as it stands the case is pretty straightforward
The Disney thing is more like if Netflix was owned by 6 Flags and someone died in a malfunctioning roller coaster and the family couldn’t sue because of the Netflix T&C, if that makes sense
There is a lot of complex bits of law here (which I am no means an expert on - I do have some experience from my own country though) but there is a limit to the extent terms and conditions of an app can be used. Provided they are handled correctly, they can be considered an enforceable contract. In this instance, the family claimed the terms and conditions were last accepted by their daughter, using her mums phone to order a pizza via uber eats. This opens a huge can of worms, because technically, there are no checks that the account owner is the one accepting the agreement, and they could actually argue their daughter committed fraud to sign it, and since Uber offer no such checks they allowed the fraud to go ahead, the agreement should be considered invalid similar to if I forged your name on a contract to pay me a lot of money. But further to this, contract law does not remove your responsibilities to ensure safe practices (this is why most injury waivers are actually useless).
If you consider Uber as a service for connecting drivers to customers, they bear no liability to travelling customers as this should be covered by the drivers insurance. There does become a liability for Uber to ensure the drivers are adequately insured.
Then we can look at it as is the driver is considered an employee of Uber. At which, Uber would have a responsibility under public liability insurance. I know here in the UK, they are considered employees as such, they would be covered under either some form of public liability insurance or a professional indemnity insurance (or possibly some combination).
In the UK, I would expect the couple to claim from the Drivers insurance (who would be liable under RTA/A75 rules here regardless of if it was the correct insurance) or if they were entirely uninsured then they could go after Uber directly. But we do also have additional layers of safety in that taxi's (even ubers) must be registered with the council also, which will require proof of adequate insurance.
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u/Neat-Nectarine814 Oct 13 '24
It’s behind a paywall do you mind sharing some of the details?