PHILADELPHIA – A panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has unanimously ruled that Uber must face disability discrimination claims from motorized wheelchairs users, who alleged the ride share service did not provide them with Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant vehicles.
According to a March 17 ruling from Third Circuit judges Cheryl Ann Krause, Peter J. Phipps and U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Wendy F. Beetlestone, the Third Circuit did not have jurisdiction to consider Uber’s argument that the plaintiffs’ allegations could only be proper if they had assented to Uber’s terms of service, which includes an arbitration agreement.
The judicial panel found that since the plaintiffs had not opted into the terms of service, the agreement’s arbitration clause could not apply to them. Krause authored the Court’s opinion.
“We will review only the District Court’s arbitrability decision, as we have no obligation to review its standing decision, and Uber has not demonstrated that pendent appellate jurisdiction over that decision would be appropriate,” Krause said.
“And because we agree that plaintiffs – who have never accepted Uber’s terms, including its mandatory arbitration clause – cannot be equitably estopped from suing in court, we will affirm the District Court’s order denying Uber’s motion to compel arbitration.”
Paul O’Hanlon, Jonathan Robison, Gayle Lewandowski and Irma Allen filed a putative class action lawsuit against Uber in June 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, charging that the company violated the ADA by not offering wheelchair-accessible vehicles to users of its service.
The plaintiffs said they did not use the ride share app because it would not accommodate their disabilities, instead deciding to file suit along with a nonprofit organization, Pittsburghers for Public Transit.
The plaintiffs wanted an injunction requiring the company to take reasonable steps to ensure they could access the service, but Uber tried to redirect the case through arbitration – the company’s argument was that even though the plaintiffs had not used the app and accepted its terms of service, that the doctrine of equitable estoppel required them to arbitrate the claims.
At the federal court level, the argument proved unsuccessful.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan denied the motion in November 2019, finding that the plaintiffs did indeed have standing under the ADA, outside the auspices of Uber’s terms of use, and that they were not bound by said terms because they had never agreed to them.
Uber appealed the decision to the Third Circuit.
Krause and her colleagues found it did not have jurisdiction to decide the standing of the plaintiffs in the case, since generally, issues of standing are not appealable and it was separate from the issue of arbitration at hand. Further, it determined Uber’s argument citing the doctrine of equitable estoppel was “meritless.”
“[Uber’s] strained argument is belied by the complaint, which describes Uber’s ‘on-demand transportation service’ without any reference to the terms of use, and alleges that plaintiffs have not downloaded Uber’s app, used its service, or otherwise availed themselves of any aspect of Uber’s service agreement,” Krause said.
“Indeed, the crux of their claim is that Uber’s unlawful discrimination has prevented them from partaking in or benefiting from that service agreement in the first place. Thus, as the Ninth Circuit put it in rejecting Uber’s estoppel argument in a companion case, where ‘plaintiffs do not rely on Uber’s terms and conditions,’ ‘none of [those terms] is mentioned in the…complaint, and the only [term] Uber has mentioned is the arbitration clause,’ it’s apparent that ‘plaintiffs’ case arises entirely under the ADA.”
The Third Circuit concluded that due to there being no evidence that plaintiffs “availed themselves’ of Uber’s service agreement prior to or in the course of litigation or ‘received any benefit under that agreement, they are not equitably estopped from rejecting its arbitration clause.”
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit case 19-3891
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania case 2:19-cv-00675
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com