Uber hit with $63 million lawsuit from passenger who was left paralysed after collision in Boston

A man in America has filed a negligence lawsuit against ride-hailing app Uber, saying it hired a driver with a history of dangerous driving which the company should have known would put others in jeopardy.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court, demands a jury trial and seeks $63 million in damages, including severe physical, mental and emotional injuries, extraordinary pain and suffering, and permanent disability.

According to a number of sources, the lawsuit says the Uber driver involved in the collision, which took place on 30 April, had such a dangerous driving history dating back to 1996, including moving violations, crashes, at least 20 citations, and state imposed driver retraining, that Uber never should have hired him as a professional driver and bears responsibility for putting him behind the wheel.

“The consuming passenger here in Massachusetts is led to believe that Uber is in the business of vetting, screening, and holding its drivers to certain standards, when in fact, that’s really not true in many, many cases and that leads directly to what happened here.

“Now we have a 31-year-old man who had a life, and a career, that’s been completely derailed, completely ruined,” said the lawyer representing the claimant.