Table of contents
Introduction
On February 5, 2026, a federal jury in Phoenix ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million in compensatory damages to Jaylynn Dean, a 19-year-old woman who was raped by her Uber driver during a late-night ride in Arizona. The Uber sexual assault verdict—the first in more than 3,000 consolidated federal lawsuits—found that the rideshare giant was liable for creating the conditions that led to Dean’s assault. The jury awarded zero punitive damages.
For a company valued at over $150 billion that generates more than $50 billion in annual revenue, $8.5 million is what Uber earns in less than two hours. That is the current price of corporate accountability for sexual violence in America.
But the most explosive revelations from this trial were not about the verdict amount. They were about what Uber’s own algorithm knew—and what the company chose to do with that knowledge.
Uber’s S-RAD Algorithm Scored the Ride as High-Risk—and Sent It Anyway
Internal Uber documents made public for the first time at trial revealed that Uber operates an internal safety tool called the Safety Risk Assessed Dispatch, or S-RAD. The algorithm scores every ride on a scale of 0 to 1 based on the likelihood of a serious safety incident. It factors in location, time of day, and the driver’s history.
Jaylynn Dean’s ride scored 0.81 out of 1—an elevated risk score indicating a high probability of a serious safety event. Uber dispatched driver Hassan Turay to pick up Dean shortly after midnight while she was alone, intoxicated, and riding back to her hotel. The company sent the ride without warning Dean or altering the match.
Plaintiff attorney Alexandra Walsh argued during closing statements that Uber marketed itself as a safe option while concealing the risks: “They made us believe that this was a place that was safe from that.” Yet the S-RAD data told a different story—one Uber kept from its riders.
Turay stopped the ride, turned off his GPS, drove into a dark parking lot, entered the backseat, and raped Dean while she lay incapacitated. Trial evidence established that Dean was intoxicated and unable to consent. Uber removed Turay from the platform only after Dean reported the assault.
Travis Kalanick, Dara Khosrowshahi, and Multiple Other Uber Executives Testified Under Oath
The nearly four-week trial included testimony from some of the most senior figures in Uber’s history. Co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick, current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and multiple other executives testified either in person or by video deposition. The list included Uber’s Director of U.S. City Operations, its Director of Applied Sciences, its Director of Communications, and its Chief Product Officer.
Corporate presentations and internal messages showed that Uber knew, based on years of internal analysis, rider reports, and law enforcement data, that women riding alone at night—particularly when intoxicated—faced heightened danger of sexual assault on the platform. The company chose not to disclose these risks to riders because doing so posed what internal documents called “serious business implications.”
Uber’s own data showed that serious sexual assault reports were roughly four times higher when female passengers were paired with male drivers. Its safety team proposed a feature allowing women riders to match with women drivers. Executives killed the feature—not because it wouldn’t work, but because implementing it would signal that the platform was unsafe for women.
Uber Received 400,000 Sexual Assault Reports in Six Years—One Every 8 Minutes
According to court documents and ongoing litigation records, Uber received approximately 400,000 reports of sexual assault or misconduct between 2017 and 2022. That averages to roughly one report every eight minutes across the United States.
Uber’s own published safety reports tell a fraction of the story. CNN reported that the company’s second safety report documented 3,824 reports of sexual assault in 2019–2020 alone, including 141 reports of rape—even as pandemic lockdowns slashed ridership. Riders were the victims in 91% of rape cases, and women constituted 81% of survivors.
NBC News noted that more than 500,000 prospective Uber drivers failed background checks in the 2019–2020 period. The company’s third safety report, analyzed by legal experts, documented 2,717 incidents for 2021–2022, with fatal physical assaults nearly doubling from the prior period.
But the public reports are sanitized. Plaintiff attorneys cited internal records suggesting 70,000 to 85,000 incidents of sexual violence are reported to Uber annually—a figure that dwarfs the curated numbers in the company’s public safety reports. And as RAINN has consistently documented, only about 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are ever reported to police. The true scope of harm on Uber’s platform is almost certainly far worse than any report suggests.
How Uber Uses the “Independent Contractor” Defense to Avoid Liability for Sexual Assault
Uber’s central legal defense is a masterclass in corporate doublespeak. The company argues that its drivers are “independent contractors,” not employees, and therefore cannot be held responsible for their criminal actions. Uber profits from every ride, controls the pricing, determines driver-passenger pairings through its algorithm, and takes a cut of every transaction—but when a driver rapes a passenger, the company claims it has nothing to do with them.
Uber attorney Kim Bueno made the position explicit during closing arguments: the driver “had no criminal history,” she noted, and had 10,000 trips with a near-perfect rating. “Was this foreseeable to Uber? And the answer to that has to be no.”
The jury partially rejected that argument. It found that Turay was acting as an apparent agent of Uber—meaning Dean reasonably believed her driver was representing the company—making Uber liable for his actions. This is the first time a federal jury has accepted the apparent agency theory against Uber in a sexual assault case, and it could reshape settlement negotiations for thousands of pending cases.
But foreseeability is not about predicting which driver will commit a crime. It is about knowing that across millions of rides, sexual assaults will happen—and asking whether you did enough to prevent them. When your own algorithm scores a ride as 0.81 out of 1 for danger and you send it anyway, the answer is obvious.
A Pattern of Corporate America Harming Women and Dodging Accountability
The Uber verdict fits into a well-documented pattern. Companies harm women, face accountability through the civil justice system, and then deploy every available tool to minimize that accountability.
Johnson & Johnson knowingly sold asbestos-contaminated talc powder marketed specifically to women—especially young, minority, and overweight women—resulting in ovarian cancer. When women pursued claims in court, corporate lobby groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform and the American Tort Reform Association labeled the resulting jury verdicts “nuclear” and used them to lobby for laws making it harder for future victims to sue. The Center for Justice & Democracy documented this campaign in its report “Nuclear Fizzle.”
Consider Tia McGee, a 15-year-old girl sexually assaulted at a Devereux behavioral health facility after a female staffer left early, leaving a male staffer alone with the girls. The jury awarded $5 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in punitive damages. A state cap reduced the punitives to $250,000. Tia died before the case was fully resolved.
The system works exactly as corporate interests designed it: women and children are harmed by corporate negligence, juries render verdicts reflecting the severity of that harm, and then caps, appeals, and lobbying erode those verdicts to dust.
The Insurance Industry, “Social Inflation,” and the War on Jury Verdicts
Behind every insufficient verdict is an infrastructure designed to keep it that way. The insurance industry invented the term “social inflation” to describe juries holding corporations accountable for genuine wrongdoing—and has spent decades lobbying for “tort reform” that limits what victims can recover.
As documented by the Consumer Federation of America and the Center for Justice & Democracy in “How the Cash-Rich Insurance Industry Fakes Crises and Invents Social Inflation,” these same insurers were happy to collect premiums when victims of sexual abuse stayed silent. It was only when the #MeToo movement empowered survivors to come forward that insurers began cutting off coverage and crying crisis.
Forced arbitration clauses have historically prevented many Uber assault victims from even reaching a courtroom. A report from the Economic Policy Institute found that more than 60 million American workers are barred from accessing courts by mandatory arbitration. For years, Uber required riders to resolve disputes through arbitration—a private process that favors the company and keeps patterns of abuse hidden.
3,000+ Uber Sexual Assault Lawsuits: What the Bellwether Verdict Means for Settlement
The Dean verdict is a bellwether—the first trial in what is now more than 3,000 consolidated federal lawsuits. An additional 500+ cases are pending in California state court. The second bellwether trial is scheduled for April 2026 in the Western District of North Carolina.
Finding Uber liable on the apparent agency theory is legally significant. The company’s core defense—that it cannot be held responsible for its drivers’ criminal acts—did not convince this jury. Plaintiff attorneys are calling the verdict “a harbinger of what’s to come.”
But we should not confuse a legal milestone with justice. Dean’s attorneys asked for $24 million in compensatory damages and $120 million in punitive damages. The jury gave her $8.5 million and nothing in punitives. For Uber, $8.5 million is not a punishment. It is a line item.
Congress is paying attention. A House oversight subcommittee has launched an inquiry into Uber’s handling of sexual assault cases. But congressional scrutiny means nothing without structural change—stronger safety mandates, an end to forced arbitration for assault claims, rejection of the independent contractor shield in cases of foreseeable harm, and punitive damages that actually punish.
The Gap Between What America Says About Protecting Women and What It Actually Does
We tell women to be careful. Take an Uber instead of walking. Don’t drive if you’ve been drinking. Text your friends your location. Share your ride status. And when women do all of that—and are still assaulted—we hand them a verdict that amounts to less than 0.02% of the company’s annual revenue and call it accountability.
The gap between what we say about protecting women and what we actually do is a choice. A choice made by companies that prioritize brand management over safety. A choice made by lobbying groups that attack jury verdicts won by survivors. A choice made by legislatures that cap damages for sexual assault at amounts so low they insult the survivors who endured them. And a choice made by a legal system that lets multi-billion-dollar corporations treat sexual violence as a cost of doing business.
Jaylynn Dean did everything right. She deserved better. The 3,000+ other plaintiffs waiting for their day in court deserve better. And until the systems that shield corporate negligence are dismantled, the promise of protecting women and children will remain exactly what it is: a slogan, not a commitment.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Uber Sexual Assault Verdict
How much did the jury award in the Uber sexual assault case?
A federal jury in Phoenix awarded Jaylynn Dean $8.5 million in compensatory damages on February 5, 2026. The jury awarded zero punitive damages. Dean’s attorneys had asked for $24 million in compensatory damages and $120 million in punitive damages.
How many sexual assault lawsuits are pending against Uber?
As of February 2026, more than 3,000 sexual assault lawsuits against Uber have been consolidated in federal court under MDL No. 3084 in the Northern District of California. An additional 500+ cases are pending in California state court. The Dean case was the first federal bellwether trial.
What is Uber’s S-RAD algorithm?
S-RAD stands for Safety Risk Assessed Dispatch. It is an internal Uber tool that scores every ride on a scale of 0 to 1 based on the likelihood of a serious safety incident. Jaylynn Dean’s ride scored 0.81 out of 1—indicating elevated risk—but Uber dispatched the ride without warning her or changing the driver match.
Is Uber safe for women riding alone at night?
Uber’s own internal data, disclosed at trial, showed that sexual assault reports were roughly four times higher when female passengers were paired with male drivers. Between 2017 and 2022, Uber received approximately 400,000 reports of sexual assault or misconduct—one every eight minutes. Uber markets itself as a safe option for women, but internal documents showed executives rejected a women-to-women driver matching feature to avoid signaling the platform was unsafe.
What is the Uber bellwether trial?
A bellwether trial is a test case used to gauge how juries respond to key legal arguments in large-scale litigation. The Dean v. Uber Technologies Inc. case was the first bellwether in the federal MDL. The result—a finding of liability under an “apparent agency” theory—could shape settlement negotiations for thousands of remaining cases. The second bellwether trial is scheduled for April 2026.
Can you sue Uber if a driver assaults you?
Yes. Uber previously required riders to resolve disputes through forced arbitration, but the Dean case made it to a federal jury. More than 3,000 plaintiffs have filed sexual assault lawsuits against Uber in federal court. The Dean verdict established that Uber can be held liable for driver assaults under an apparent agency theory—the first time a federal jury has reached that conclusion.
What did Travis Kalanick and Dara Khosrowshahi testify about?
Both Uber’s co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick and current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi testified during the nearly four-week trial, along with multiple other senior executives. Internal corporate presentations and messages showed that Uber’s leadership knew women riding alone at night faced heightened danger of sexual assault but chose not to disclose these risks because of “serious business implications.”
About the Author
Chi Nguyen is a Houston personal injury attorney dedicated to helping accident victims understand their rights and receive fair compensation under Texas law. With extensive experience representing injured Texans, Attorney Nguyen combines legal expertise with a commitment to client education and empowerment.