Global transportation technology company Uber has settled a second lawsuit filed by a woman who was raped by her Uber driver in Delhi, India, in 2014 and who alleged Uber executives pried into her confidential medical records.
The Uber driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, is serving a life sentence for raping the woman, who is believed to be an Indian-American now residing in Texas. As the criminal case unfolded, Yadav was found to have a history of sexual assault cases registered against him. In a previous lawsuit that was settled, the victim stated that Uber took inadequate steps to ensure the safety standards of their drivers.
The new lawsuit was filed against former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick; Eric Alexander, Uber’s former vice president of business in Asia; and Emil Michael, Uber’s former senior vice president for business. The lawsuit was filed June 15 in US District Court for Northern California. The case against Michael was dismissed in October this year.
The lawsuit states that the named Uber executives “bought into the narrative of rape denialism which focuses on whether a victim had been drinking, what she was wearing, or whether she knew the alleged rapist, rather than on the very real physical, emotional and financial toll that rape takes on a victim.”
After the attack, Alexander reportedly went to Delhi and obtained the medical records of the victim generated by physicians who examined her after the rape. Alexander shared the records with Kalanick and Michael, along with other staff at Uber. The executives then speculated that the victim had “made up the brutal rape in collusion with a rival of Uber in India in order to undermine Uber’s business,” states the lawsuit.
“This flagrantly irresponsible, defamatory and offensive theory concocted by
Alexander, Kalanick and Michael has no rational basis,” stated the victim in her lawsuit, noting that the named executives “have no medical training from which they could have reviewed medical examination records of a rape victim and arrived at such a hypothesis.”
The terms of the settlement had not been disclosed on Pacer as of Dec. 11. Uber issued no comment on the settlement. But shortly after the attack in 2014, Kalanick released a statement, saying: “Our entire team's hearts go out to the victim of this despicable crime. We will do everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this perpetrator to justice and to support the victim and her family in her recovery.”
