By Nathalie Voit

According to a complaint filed on July 13 by law firm Slater Slater Schulman LLP, over 500 women are suing Uber over allegations of sexual assault.

The legal action, filed in a San Francisco court, alleged that the ride-sharing giant knowingly disregarded reports of widespread sexual misconduct within its platform to prioritize growth over passenger safety.

“Uber’s whole business model is predicated on giving people a safe ride home, but rider safety was never their concern – growth was, at the expense of their passengers’ safety,” Founding Partner of Slater Slater Schulman LLP Adam Slater said in a statement. “While the company has acknowledged this crisis of sexual assault in recent years, its actual response has been slow and inadequate, with horrific consequences.”

Details of the filing state that Uber had been aware that its drivers had been inappropriately targeting female passengers since as early as 2014. Nonetheless, the ride-hailing platform turned a blind eye to well-documented claims of sexual assault so that it could continue to grow at the expense of customer safety.

“As outlined in the complaint, Uber was fixated on getting new drivers onboarded as quickly as possible to fuel growth, so it eschewed traditional background check standards,” Wednesday’s statement from Slater & Slater read.

“For example, former CEO Travis Kalanick intentionally opted to hire drivers without fingerprinting them or running their information through FBI databases, and Uber’s current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi continued this policy after he took over in August 2017.”

Approximately 550 clients from multiple states were identified in the complaint. Slater & Slater also said that another 150 women have pending claims against Uber that are being “actively investigated.”

The suit includes victims of kidnapping, sexual assault, sexual battery, rape, false imprisonment, stalking, and harassment.

The news comes just two weeks after Uber released its second U.S. safety report that showed that nearly 1,000 sexual assaults took place in U.S. Uber vehicles in 2020 alone.

The company also said it became aware of 3,824 incidents of the five most severe categories of sexual assault, ranging from “non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part” to rape in 2019 and 2020.

Click here to view the full release.