Uber can’t use widow to block suit over husband’s expressway death
(Legal Newsline) — Uber can’t use its user agreement to block a lawsuit from the widow of a man who died while riding in a rideshare vehicle on a Chicago expressway, the Illinois Supreme Court has ruled.
On Sept. 24, the state high court unanimously ruled Uber can’t send to arbitration the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the widow of Mark Geller, who died in a 2022 crash.
According to court documents and published reports, Geller was a passenger in a vehicle owned and driven by Ejaz Rathore, which Geller had hired through the Uber rideshare app.
During that ride, however, Rathore lost control of the vehicle on the Stevenson Expressway, killing both himself and Geller.
Geller’s wife, Gloria Sheridan Geller then filed suit against Uber and Rathore’s estate, claiming wrongful death against Uber and negligence against Rathore.
Uber responded in court by seeking to dismiss the lawsuit. The company claimed Sheridan Geller’s claims couldn’t be lodged in court, because both she and her husband had signed Uber’s user agreement, which includes language requiring them to take their claims for injury to arbitration, rather than in court through a lawsuit.
Businesses typically favor arbitration, as it represents a more straightforward, predictable and less costly approach to dispute resolution, as compared to the much larger costs racked up through years of proceedings and attorney fees that can be capped off by a potentially massive verdict delivered by a jury.
In recent years particularly, businesses, like Uber, have included clauses in user agreements requiring customers to agree to submit their legal claims to arbitration, rather than lawsuits, as a condition of service.
However, trial lawyers have fought the entire time to find ways to sidestep or overthrow such arbitration requirements, as they prefer to send the cases in court as lawsuits that can potentially be converted into large payouts worth millions of dollars at a time.
In this case, a Cook County judge noted the Gellers had each agreed to the arbitration requirement when they signed up to use the Uber app.
However, while the judge said Uber could have used Mark Geller’s agreement to block a lawsuit, they can’t use Sheridan Geller’s arbitration agreement to block her lawsuit over her claims as Mark Geller’s surviving spouse.
That decision was reversed on appeal by the Illinois First District Appellate Court.
But on appeal to the state’s highest court, the Illinois Supreme Court said the Cook County court got the case right, and Uber can be sued.
The decision was authored by Justice David K. Overstreet, with concurrence from all of the court’s six other justices.
In this case, Overstreet said, Uber cannot show Sheridan Geller agreed to delegate her rights to sue over to an arbitrator.
“Because Sheridan’s agreement applies only to disputes arising from her own use of Uber’s services and because the estate’s wrongful death claims arise solely from Mark’s use and accrued only upon his death, no clear and unmistakable evidence exists to conclude that the parties agreed to delegate arbitrability of these claims to an arbitrator,” Overstreet wrote.
“Thus, the circuit court properly addressed arbitrability and properly found that, based on the language of Sheridan’s terms-of-use agreement, Sheridan did not consent to submit the merits of the dispute to the arbitrator.”
Sheridan Geller was represented in the case by attorney Charles Haskins, of the Clifford Law Offices, of Chicago.
Following the Illinois Supreme Court’s ruling, Haskins and Clifford Law released a statement praising the decision.
“We are extremely grateful that the state’s highest court determined simply signing up for an application like Uber does not compel any controversy imaginable to arbitration, only ones where the parties agreed to arbitrate,” Haskins said. “This decision has significance to all consumers in Illinois, and around the country, given the prevalence of mobile applications and the Terms of Use that accompany them. The unfettered use of mandatory arbitration clauses by large corporations who use it as a device to avoid full justice was clarified in this important decision. Arbitration is a matter of consent of the parties, not coercion.”
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