{"id":303364,"date":"2026-07-22T23:16:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T23:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/303364\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T23:16:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T23:16:54","slug":"brooklyn-jury-to-decide-whether-uber-drivers-are-contractors-or-employees-in-car-crash-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/303364\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn jury to decide whether Uber drivers are contractors or employees in car crash suit"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Brooklyn judge ruled on July 13 that a jury will decide the question of whether Uber drivers are employees or independent contractors in a first-of-its-kind case over whether the rideshare app can be held liable for car accidents.<\/p>\n

The case comes out of a dispute over a car crash that happened in 2019 between a Brooklyn resident and an Uber driver who was on duty at the time of the accident. Vanessa Rawlins was riding as a passenger when Uber driver Soe Myint allegedly struck her car.<\/p>\n

Rawlins sued both Myint and Uber, alleging that the company was also liable for the crash. Uber denied Myint had any employment relationship with the company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2022, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Francois Rivera found Myint to be liable for the accident, but decided that the question of whether Uber was also liable needed to proceed to trial.<\/p>\n

When that trial began this past June, Uber asked Brooklyn Supreme court Justice Aaron Maslow for a directed verdict, arguing that Myint could not be characterized as an employee because he exercised complete discretion over \u201cwho, what, when, where, why and how\u201d he operated his vehicle, and filled out a 1099 instead of a W2 among other tests they claimed showed him to be a contractor not an employee.<\/p>\n

Maslow ultimately decided on July 13 that the decision over whether Myint is an employee should be decided by jury.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Court concluded that reasonable jurors could differ as to whether Uber exercised sufficient control over the manner and means by which Myint performed his work,\u201d wrote Maslow in his decision denying a motion for a directed verdict.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Across the country, the question over whether Uber drivers should be classified as employees has sparked legal challenges, leading to some conflicting responses. In California, for instance, Uber officially became classified as independent contractors after the state implemented a three-factor ABC test to define employment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rawlins\u2019 lawsuit is not the first case in New York state to consider whether the rideshare drivers are employees, but it is the first tort case to do so.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a 2020 New York case, the Appellate Division, Third Department Court\u00a0ruled that Uber<\/a> was liable to contribute to unemployment insurance for its drivers as it would to employees.\u00a0But New York School of Law professor Andrea Johnson said that when it comes to Rawlins\u2019 case, the standards for a car crash are different than in the realm of worker benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case asks the question for one specific purpose: whether Uber can be held financially responsible when a driver injures someone. We\u2019re in a different context, and the context matters. I think the logic from that [Third Department] case \u2014 which was an unemployment insurance decision involving Uber itself \u2014 is somewhat persuasive, but I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s predictive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uber\u2019s attorneys have argued as much. In court papers, they argued that Rawlins\u2019 case should not rely on the New York Attorney General\u2019s massive settlement with Uber over the unemployment insurance in considering drivers\u2019 employment status.<\/p>\n

One big difference between labor standards and tort claims is that lawsuits torts involving individual incidents cannot be dealt with as a class.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have here is a car accident. These cases can\u2019t be settled as a class. They come up one by one,\u201d Johnson said.\n<\/p>\n

This means that Uber can\u2019t resolve all of the tort cases as a class it has done in other instances of this debate, so the risk of potential litigation costs for each individual case could add up.<\/p>\n

For Rawlins, a decision finding Myint to be an Uber employee could, in practice, increase the amount that a jury would allow in damages.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially with juries, the dollar figure may change based on who the defendant is. From a practical standpoint,\u2019 said Johnson. \u201cUber is a deep pocket. In these serious injury cases, a plaintiff with significant injuries may not be able to collect from an individual driver the way they could from Uber.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Brooklyn judge ruled on July 13 that a jury will decide the question of whether Uber drivers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,90392,99,2153,114976,114977,105981,114978,9,24,5120,63,2152,114979,114980,114981,114982,114983,114984],"class_list":["post-303364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-judge","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-car-accident","tag-employee-classification","tag-independent-contractor","tag-jury-trial","tag-justice-aaron-maslow","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-law","tag-nyc","tag-personal-injury","tag-soe-myint","tag-tort-liability","tag-uber-drivers","tag-vanessa-rawlins","tag-vicarious-liability","tag-worker-status"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}