Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Early Friday morning, just two days after the judge presiding over the Uber class action suit in California ruled that drivers agreed to arbitrate any disputes with Uber outside of a court as a condition of driving for the company could still participate in the class action suit, Uber sent drivers a new agreement. That document includes a revised arbitration clause that could undermine that ruling, and plaintiffs' attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan is moving quickly to rebut it.
Liss-Riordan and her team are filing an emergency motion that will be heard in front of Judge Edward Chen next Thursday; It asks the court to block Uber from enforcing this new driver agreement.
"Uber has tried to fix the problem that Judge Chen ruled made the agreement unenforceable," Liss-Riordan told BuzzFeed News in an email. "He ruled that the [Private Attorney General Act] waiver is illegal as a violation of public policy (which it is, in light of recent California Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit rulings), and he ruled that he could not sever the illegal provision without rewriting the agreement, which courts are not allowed to do. So Uber has tried to be clever by redrafting its agreement in a way that it can contend that the challenged provision is severable."
The Private Attorney General Act or PAGA gives "a private citizen the right to pursue fines that would normally only be available to the State of California. It also allows that private citizen to "seek civil penalties not only for violations that he personally suffered" but also for violations of “other current or former employees."
The Uber driver agreement of 2014 and 2015 illegally waived drivers rights under PAGA thus informing Judge Chen's decision that the arbitration clause could not be honored because it contained an illegal provision. But Uber's new agreement has been rewritten to prohibit drivers from pursuing any class or representative action against the company EXCEPT under PAGA. Therefore, the company has removed the illegal provision of the arbitration clause and in effect made it enforceable by a court.
BuzzFeed News / Via drive.google.com
More details to follow...
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