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Indian Woman Sues Uber In the US Over Alleged New Delhi Taxi Rape
"Uber has been the subject of controversy all around the globe," notes new submitter yuetteasvy (3999351), who supplies this story from Reuters about one of the reasons for that controversy: An Indian woman who says she was raped by an Uber driver while she was traveling in his cab in December is suing the San Francisco–based online firm in a U.S. federal court in California, claiming it failed to put in place basic safety procedures while running its car service in India. In her lawsuit, filed on Thursday, the New Delhi woman called the app-based service the "modern day equivalent of electronic hitchhiking." The unidentified plaintiff also calls for Uber to overhaul its safety practices, and seeks unspecified damages in the case, according to Reuters. The news agency quoted Uber as saying that it's "deepest sympathies remain with the victim of this horrific crime." Earlier, the woman was reported to have enlisted the services of Douglas Wigdor, a high-profile U.S. lawyer who represented Nafissatou Diallo, the New York City hotel maid who accused the former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault. Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney's office went on to drop all charges against Strauss-Kahn, while a civil suit was settled out of court.
Will you say the same, if UBER ignored a legal requirement in the US to conduct background checks? Didn't take any action when someone who travelled in the same car as the rapist reported the rapist for making her feel uncomfortable? Liability attaches to UBER.
And who up voted you? Come on slashdot, you are better than this!
Uber is a US company and Uber supplied the drivers hence she definitely has standing to sue.
The facts have been misrepresented in this case both in the Indian media and now in the U.S press. UBER did indeed ask for a police certified character certificate from the driver and the driver in turn handed them one, albeit a forged certificate. Any Indian who has worked with security agencies will tell you that Indian police character verification certificate is simply expensive paper to wipe your ass with. They have no standard format, are easily faked and are expensive to obtain no matter whom you pay - the crooks in uniform who give you one for a bribe or the crooks not in uniform who make forged copies for a fee. There is no central verification database which companies can use to authenticate one of these certificates. How then was UBER supposed to figure out that the certificate he handed them was a forged one? UBER is a boon for middle class Indians who are otherwise at the mercy of corrupt autorickshaw drivers who have no fixed metering and fleece customers based on the hour. Also, there is atleast some sort of traceability in a cab. Had the victim been raped by an autorickshaw driver, the case would still be unsolved: just another file in a mountain of open rape cases that the Indian police is too incompetent to deal with. What happened to her was terrible, but she is being an opportunist here. This is less about ushering in accountability from UBER than it is about squeezing UBER for every penny she can. It saddens me that a fellow Indian would resort to this.
the woman was reported to have enlisted the services of Douglas Wigdor, a high-profile U.S. lawyer who represented Nafissatou Diallo, the New York City hotel maid who accused the former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault.
How did she manage to get hooked up with the same lawyer? How did a citizen living in India get connected with a high-profile lawyer in New York?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If they refuse to play by the same rules, then they have a hard time claiming their process is even better than the legal process they're supposed to use, without actually doing an almost perfect job.
Once they start following the same rules and checks as taxis, then if there is a problem all we have to ask is, "are they any worse than taxis?"
When it is a group that is in ongoing violation of the regulations, I just don't see why they qualify for the protection offered by having complied with the process. After all, that is the taxi company's excuse; background checks are regulated, and they did the checks that are supposed to work.
If you don't know how "standing" works in law, how can you be in a position to argue that there is a problem with it in this case? It seems to me the farthest reasonable position in the direction you're going would be, "golly gee, I have no idea how that stuff works, I wonder if her lawyer got legal advice first?"
And yet the state by releasing him seems to have thought he wasn't much of a danger.
The state has very very limited powers. Democratic states like India cannot just lock people up because they feel like it. The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" means that there should be quite a few dangerous people out there. That is the reason why taxi companies and other jobs with responsibilities are regulated and require background checks.
The wierd way that people complain about the state not protcecting them at the same time as trying to talk away all regulation power from the state shows some kind of really strong mental dissonance.
The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" means that there should be quite a few dangerous people out there.
And if you refuse to hire people because of supposedly baseless accusations made against them, you can get sued for that too!
Why should it be okay for employers to consider applicants guilty until proven otherwise?
uber isn't a taxi service
it's a ride-sharing service
by that, they mean, a person with a car, who doesn't have any interest in driving to point A or point B, drives to point A, picks up one or more people they don't know, and drives them to point B for money. But only can be paid by credit cards. And everything is arranged over the internet.
See. Completely different from a taxi service.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Bullshit. The real problem is that women aren't treated like human beings in India. That is why so many rape cases get dismissed and why it is perfectly legal for a husband to rape his wife there.
It was legal in most Western states until roughly the 1980ies/90ies.
The Soviet Union made it illegal in 1922.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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