Can I Sue Lyft or Uber if the Driver Attacked Me?

What the Law Says

• Insurance denials for assault claims are expected and contestable: Auto liability policies routinely exclude intentional acts. That exclusion does not eliminate legal recourse. It redirects the claim toward the company’s own negligent conduct rather than the driver’s intentional act.
• Negligent hiring is the central legal theory: When a rideshare company approves or retains a driver despite warning signs in their background, prior complaints, or deficient screening, that company may bear direct liability for harm the driver causes to passengers.
• CPUC background check requirements create a legal standard: California’s Public Utilities Commission sets specific requirements for rideshare driver screening. A company that fails to meet those requirements, or that meets them superficially without genuine vetting, may be found negligent in the hiring and retention of the driver who caused the assault.
• Common carrier duty of care applies to rideshare companies: California law imposes a heightened duty of care on carriers that transport passengers for compensation. Rideshare platforms operating under CPUC authority carry that elevated responsibility, which sets a higher bar for what constitutes reasonable care toward passengers.
• Prior complaints about the driver are critical evidence: Internal complaint records, prior incident reports, and any communications between the driver and the platform before the assault occurred are among the most important documents in a negligent hiring case, and they must be preserved through legal action before they disappear.

Why Insurance Denies Rideshare Assault Claims and What Comes Next

A rideshare passenger injured in a collision is covered by the platform’s commercial auto policy during an active trip. A passenger assaulted by the driver occupies a different legal position because intentional act exclusions in standard liability policies remove coverage for harm caused by deliberate conduct. 

Insurers apply those exclusions to deny assault claims routinely, and they do so with considerable confidence that most claimants will not know where to turn after the denial. The denial is accurate as far as it goes. The commercial auto policy was not designed to cover intentional torts. 

What it does not address is the separate question of whether the company itself acted negligently in a way that created the conditions for the assault to occur. Those are two different theories of liability, and only the second one requires looking beyond the insurance policy toward the corporation’s own conduct.

The Shift From Driver Liability to Corporate Negligence

Holding Uber or Lyft directly accountable for a driver assault requires establishing that the company failed in its own duty, not merely that it employed someone who committed a crime. The legal theories that support that claim include negligent hiring, negligent retention, negligent supervision, and the heightened duty of care California imposes on common carriers.

Each theory focuses on what the company did or failed to do before and during the driver’s time on the platform, not on the driver’s intentional act. That focus is what gets past the intentional act exclusion and creates a path to recovery against the company itself.

Negligent Hiring and What It Requires

Negligent hiring is a civil claim asserting that an employer or hiring entity placed someone in a position where they could foreseeably cause harm, despite having reason to know that person posed a risk. 

In the rideshare context, it asks whether Uber or Lyft conducted adequate screening before approving the driver and whether the information available during that process should have prevented approval.

California courts have recognized negligent hiring as a valid theory of corporate liability, and the rideshare context is particularly well-suited to it because the platforms hold significant control over who is admitted to the system and what information is reviewed before approval. 

A company that conducts superficial background checks, relies on screening vendors with known limitations, or ignores flagged information in an applicant’s record may be found to have failed its passengers before the first trip ever began.

What a Background Check Should Have Found

California Public Utilities Commission Decision 13-09-045 established the background check requirements that transportation network companies operating in California must meet. Those requirements set a minimum standard for what the screening process must cover, including criminal history, sex offender registry checks, and driving record review.

When a driver who ultimately assaults a passenger had a prior criminal record involving violence, sexual misconduct, or other conduct that should have disqualified them from approval, the question is whether the background check the platform conducted was sufficient to surface that history.

A check that technically complied with the minimum requirements but used a vendor or methodology unlikely to identify the relevant record may still fall short of the standard of care California imposes on common carriers.

Negligent Retention: When the Company Knew After Approval

Negligent hiring addresses what the company should have known before approving the driver. Negligent retention addresses what the company knew after approval and failed to act on. Rideshare platforms receive complaints from passengers through their own apps. 

Those complaints are logged, assigned to internal review processes, and in some cases escalated. When a driver with a pattern of concerning passenger complaints is allowed to continue operating without investigation, suspension, or removal, the company’s inaction becomes the basis for a negligent retention claim.

Prior complaints about a specific driver, particularly those involving inappropriate conduct, boundary violations, or threatening behavior, are among the most powerful evidence in a rideshare assault case. 

Obtaining that documentation requires formal legal demands and discovery, because the platforms do not voluntarily disclose internal complaint histories. Moving quickly to send a preservation demand before those records are purged or altered is one of the first steps after an assault is reported.