Uber’s Regulatory Troubles Continue In San Francisco

It seems Uber is picking up more lawsuits than passengers as of late.

Amidst ongoing battles in New York City, Chicago and the state of California, the mobile cab booking and fare paying company, now finds itself on the embroiled in legal turmoil in San Francisco as well.

Leonid Goncharov and Mohammed Eddine, two “licensed and permitted cab drivers,” have filed a class action lawsuit against Uber. The lawsuit alleges that Uber is “acting as a taxicab company while sometimes denying this fact in order to avoid all regulations governing taxicab companies.” 

Uber, of course, is dismissing the lawsuit as “baseless,” and said it intends to defend itself in a lawsuit, writing, “Uber would rather compete for business on the streets of San Francisco than in the courtroom, but Uber will defend these claims in court and is confident of the outcome.”

The San Francisco suit comes just as the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued citations against Uber, Lyft and SideCar for “operating unlicensed charter-party businesses.”

Uber’s argument is that it doesn’t own any vehicles but is simply a partner of companies who do, and that being forced to apply for a chart-party carrier license would in essence make it “double-regulated” by the CPUC.

Regulatory battles are certainly not foreign to the company. As Tech Crunch writes, “back in 2010, the company changed its name from UberCab in response to cease-and-desist letters from the San Francisco Metro Transit Authority & the Public Utilities Commission of California. The company dropped the ‘cab’ part of the name to distance itself from the accusation that it’s running a taxi service.”

But cab and transportation companies around the company aren’t convinced. Uber’s battle in Chicago has the company resorting to petitioning the city to changes its electronic measurement devices. In New York City, Uber was forced to end its lower priced “Taxi” service after a lengthy battle with the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), although it appears there’s still some room for negotiation.  Couple those regulatory issues with the ones Uber is seeing in Chicago and San Francisco, and it’s under siege from coast to coast.

To see a .pdf file of the class action suit on Tech Crunch, click here.