Background
On the night of May 11, 2018, Stella Yeh — a University of San Diego student — attended an off-campus party where she drank from a water bottle filled with spirits, played a drinking game, and took shots. After leaving the party, she and three friends went to a Pacific Beach fast-food restaurant, where she got into an argument and insisted on leaving. Either Yeh or a friend ordered an Uber to take her back to her dorm.
Driver Louvensky Geffrard arrived at approximately 12:49 a.m. Once underway, Yeh directed him to turn the wrong direction, became angry when Geffrard pointed out that the app’s directions took them another way, and Geffrard complied with her instruction. After entering the I-5 North on-ramp, Yeh recognized the mistake. Unable to immediately U-turn, Geffrard drove north to the next exit at Gilman Drive. On the way, Yeh rolled down the window and vomited; some came back into the car, onto Geffrard’s clothing and the dashboard. He pulled over on the shoulder so she could finish, then continued.
Yeh then asked to be let out. Geffrard refused to release her on the freeway and offered to drive her back to the Pacific Beach restaurant. Yeh canceled the ride in the Uber app. After they exited at Gilman Drive and turned south back toward I-5, Geffrard stopped at a red light under the freeway; Yeh opened the door and got out. Geffrard drove away.
At 12:55 a.m., Yeh requested a second ride through the app. Driver Mark Rycz arrived at Gilman Drive at 12:58 a.m., did not see her at first, called her through the app (no answer), then spotted her sitting on an embankment and called out that he was her ride. Yeh did not respond or get into his clearly Uber-marked vehicle; she walked away. Rycz canceled the request around 1:03 a.m. and left.
Sometime thereafter, Yeh traveled more than four miles east, from Gilman Drive to the State Route 52 / Interstate 805 interchange. Friends monitoring her location on Find My observed that her phone was stationary for about ten minutes and then moved east too quickly to be on foot; an officer later testified that the distance could not have been covered by walking in that timeframe. No one knows who transported her or in what circumstances. At about 1:29 a.m., a motorist on eastbound SR 52 saw Yeh on the transition ramp to I-805, pulled over, told her to leave the road, and at 1:32 a.m. called 911 from the I-805 emergency lane while she stood nearby; during the call he watched her walk into southbound freeway traffic. She was struck by two vehicles and pronounced dead at the scene.
Yeh’s mother, Josefina McGarry, sued Uber Technologies, Inc., Rasier, LLC, Rasier-CA, LLC, and the two drivers, individually and as Yeh’s successor in interest. The operative third amended complaint asserted nine causes of action: negligence on a common-carrier theory; negligent hiring, supervision, training, and retention; intentional and negligent misrepresentation; violations of the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act (Civ. Code § 52.1); survivorship; wrongful death; unfair business practices (Bus. & Prof. Code § 17200 et seq.); and declaratory relief. The trial court sustained Uber’s demurrer to the misrepresentation claims without leave to amend, then granted summary judgment for Uber on what remained, principally for lack of causation. McGarry appealed, represented by Finn Trial Attorneys (David P. Finn and Alvin M. Gomez). Uber was represented on appeal by Wood, Smith, Henning & Berman (Steven R. Disharoon) and Perkins Coie (Joshua Patashnik).
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal affirmed. The opinion is built around the modern California formulation of proximate cause as a two-step inquiry into (i) cause-in-fact and (ii) the scope of risk created by the defendant’s conduct, the latter analyzed as a matter of law on public-policy grounds. The dispositive question, the panel held, is scope of risk:
“The legal issue before us is whether [Yeh’s] death from being struck by two vehicles on a freeway interchange that was miles from where she was left by the Uber drivers was within the scope of risk from Uber’s conduct based on public policy considerations. . . . We conclude it was not.”
An important framing choice in the opinion: the court expressly did not decide whether Uber owed Yeh a heightened common-carrier duty. It assumed, without deciding, that the Uber drivers could or should have done more to safeguard her, and resolved the appeal solely on causation. (See slip op. at p. 8, fn. 4.) Practitioners reading this opinion for the common-carrier proposition will not find a holding there.
On the risk-standard analysis, the panel drew a sharp distinction between Ingahm v. Luxor Cab Co. (2001) 93 Cal.App.4th 1045 — on which McGarry relied — and the case before it. Ingahm, the court explained, involved a cab driver who let a physically unstable woman out two blocks from her dental-clinic destination after she pleaded for a closer drop-off because of her condition; she then fell while walking the remainder and was injured. The risk of a fall while walking was within the range of harm that could flow from negligently ejecting a physically compromised passenger short of her stop. Here, by contrast, Yeh exited Geffrard’s car of her own motion at a red light on a non-freeway street where both drivers testified no other cars were present; she had her phone; and she declined her second ride. Whatever risks Uber’s conduct created at Gilman Drive, the court concluded, being struck miles away on a different freeway after an unknown person transported her there is not among them.
The court drew the controlling analogy to Lammers v. Pacific Electric Railway Co. (1921) 186 Cal. 379 — what the panel calls a “legal chestnut” — in which an intoxicated train passenger was ejected and injured hours later by another train three-quarters of a mile away. The Supreme Court in Lammers held that ejection was not the legal cause of the later injury because the passenger had “immediately left the tracks of the defendant railway and entered a ditch.” The panel quoted Lammers for the proposition that “however dangerous the point of his ejection may have been, [the passenger] was entitled to go wherever [he or she] pleased,” and that “there is no more reason for holding the defendant liable for the injury in this case than there would be had the plaintiff wandered into some neighboring yard and been shot as a burglar.” Yeh’s path — from a relatively safe non-freeway street to a freeway interchange more than four miles away, via transportation by an unidentified third party — the court found analytically indistinguishable from Lammers.
The panel rejected McGarry’s alternative framing — that the range of harm should be defined broadly enough to encompass the possibility that someone could pick up an intoxicated passenger left at one place and abandon her on a freeway elsewhere — in characteristically pointed terms:
“This is a speculative bridge built too far on too many ‘could haves.’”
And the panel closed the causation analysis with the policy statement that is likely to be most cited from this otherwise uncitable opinion:
“To hold otherwise would require rideshare companies such as Uber to act as an insurer for any harm suffered by a passenger who departs a ride anywhere other than the originally requested destination. Public policy cannot and does not compel such a result.”
On the Bane Act count, the panel separately affirmed. The essence of a Bane Act claim is that the defendant used “threats, intimidation, or coercion” to prevent the plaintiff from exercising a legal right. McGarry’s theory was that Geffrard ejected Yeh by force because she had vomited in his car. Undisputed evidence, the panel noted, showed that Yeh — not Geffrard — canceled the ride in the app, that Geffrard refused to release her on the freeway and offered to take her back to where he had picked her up, and that she opened the door and got out at a red light. McGarry presented no contrary evidence; her opposition rested on the assertion that a reasonable inference of forced ejection “could” be drawn from the vomiting episode. Distinguishing reasonable inference from speculation, the court found McGarry’s theory the latter and affirmed.
Key Takeaways
- Scope-of-risk, not bare foreseeability, controls proximate cause. California courts apply the risk standard from the Restatement (Third) of Torts to limit liability when an injury is only distantly connected to the defendant’s conduct. A passenger’s eventual injury may be loosely foreseeable in the colloquial sense without being “within the scope of risk” the defendant’s conduct created.
- The court did not decide whether Uber is a common carrier. Uber, on summary judgment, did not dispute duty for purposes of the motion, and the panel expressly declined to reach the heightened-duty question. Practitioners should not cite this opinion (even by mention) for the common-carrier proposition; the case is decided on causation alone.
- Lammers still governs the ejected-intoxicated-passenger fact pattern. The 1921 California Supreme Court decision in Lammers v. Pacific E.R. Co. — ejected passenger, distance later, struck by a separate vehicle — remains the controlling analogy, and the panel’s reliance on it indicates that Lammers‘s logic has full vitality in the rideshare context a century later.
- Ingahm is narrow. Ingahm v. Luxor Cab Co. covers the “passenger falls while walking the remaining distance” fact pattern. It does not extend to attenuated chains involving unidentified third-party transport and a different freeway miles away.
- Drop-off-location safety is material undisputed fact. The opinion repeatedly emphasized that Gilman Drive was “relatively safe,” that no cars were present, and that Yeh had her phone. Defense counsel in future rideshare and cab-ejection cases will likely treat these facts as the touchstone for whether a premature drop-off is within the scope of risk created by the carrier.
- “Reasonable inference” vs. speculation. Both the negligence-causation and Bane Act rulings turn on the same evidentiary line: an opposing party at summary judgment must point to inferences reasonably deducible from evidence, not to chains of “could-have” possibilities or unsupported attacks on a witness’s credibility. The court found McGarry’s inferences on both issues to be on the speculation side of the line.
- Cancellation in the app cuts against a Bane Act ejection theory. The record showing that Yeh, not Geffrard, terminated the ride was central to the Bane Act ruling. Plaintiffs alleging coerced ejection from a rideshare will need to confront app-log evidence directly.
- Unpublished. The opinion is not citable as authority in California courts under rule 8.1115(a). It is likely, however, to circulate informally in rideshare defense circles as a useful articulation of the scope-of-risk and Lammers framework on these facts.