A dark galaxy alongside a bright star (Image by NASA)
In Valentine v. James River Ins. Co., No. 1:20-cv-01638-CMA-SKC, 2022 WL 4112210 (D. Colo. Aug. 1, 2022) (USMJ), an Uber driver was injured in an automobile collision with an uninsured motorist.
The Uber driver, Ms. Elet Valentine, sued Uber, an Uber subsidiary, and James River Insurance Company which issued a liability insurance policy to the subsidiary to cover Uber driving operations. James River "offered Plaintiff $250,000 multiple times, which she rejected each time." Valentine, 2022 WL 4112210, at *1. "Ultimately," Ms. Valentine's suit against Uber and its subsidiary was "to recover the amounts she has not received from James River." Valentine, 2022 WL 4112210, at *1.
From the beginning, Uber distanced itself from the Uber driver. It did not sign a contract with her. That is Uber's business model.
Instead, a wholly owned subsidiary of Uber contracted with the Uber driver. The opinion gives the subsidiary's name, which is Raiser, LLC. The opinion does not describe what relationship existed between the Uber driver and Raiser, apart from Raiser's contractual obligation to obtain liability insurance for Uber drivers.
The contract called for the subsidiary to obtain liability insurance for driving operations for Uber. Although the opinion does not say so, I am intuiting that California law imposed a level of uninsured motorist coverage, perhaps the $250,000.00 that James River kept offering Valentine. She was not satisfied with that offer because apparently the extent of her injuries, or her or her lawyers' evaluation of her injuries, was greater than $250,000.00. She brought suit against Uber and Raiser in particular for the amount of her damages that exceeded $250,000.00.
At any rate, Ms. Valentine's contract with Raiser called for Raiser to purchase liability insurance and for all we know from the opinion, that is what Raiser, the Uber subsidiary, purchased, namely, liability insurance. No word in the contract or the opinion about uninsured motorist coverage, and no word either about coverage for the full extent of the drivers' injuries, just liability coverage per the express words of the contract written by the subsidiary (or by Uber, the facts are unclear as to who wrote the contract at issue in this case, except that the contract clearly was not written by the Uber driver).
The driver sued Uber and the subsidiary for breach of contract and for what she alleged as "the nondelegable doctrine" (which the Magistrate Judge analyzed both as "vicarious liability" and as "nondelegable doctrine," finding that neither was an independent claim for relief). In this case, the Magistrate Judge recommended that Uber's motion for summary judgment, and its subsidiary's motion for summary judgment, be granted.
That left any remaining cost of the Uber driver's medical bills incurred while driving for Uber, with the driver who had the misfortune of a rear-end collision with an uninsured motorist while driving for Uber. It will be recalled that no UM coverage was at issue here as such. Parenthetically, in a footnote the Magistrate Judge reported a separate recommendation that James River Insurance Company's motion for summary judgment should be granted also. Valentine, 2022 WL 4112210, at *1 n.2.
Please read the disclaimer. ©2022 Dennis J. Wall. All rights reserved.
Comments