Civil Claims and Criminal Cases After a Rideshare Assault

Why the Two Cases Are Separate, and What That Means for a Survivor

A rideshare assault can lead to two cases that share the same facts but have different owners and different purposes.

The criminal case belongs to the government. A prosecutor, working for a state or for the federal government, decides whether to charge the driver or another person accused of the assault. The case is filed in criminal court in the government's name, not the survivor's. Its purpose is to decide whether the accused person committed a crime and, if so, what punishment follows.

The civil claim belongs to the person who was hurt. In a civil case, the plaintiff is the person who brings the case, and the defendant is the person or business the case is brought against. A survivor can be the plaintiff. In some situations a family member can be the plaintiff instead. The defendant may be the driver, the rideshare company, or both. The civil case is heard in civil court and follows civil procedures. Its purpose is to decide whether a defendant is legally responsible for the harm, and what that responsibility covers.

Because the two cases are independent, neither waits for or blocks the other. The guide on filing without a police report covers a related question: what a civil claim looks like when no criminal report exists at all.

For a survivor, this means that whether to report, whether to bring a civil claim, and when to take either step are separate decisions. Someone in this position may weigh each one on its own terms, and a conversation with an attorney can help sort out which questions belong to which system.

What a Criminal Case Can and Cannot Do for a Survivor

The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics defines violent crime to include rape and sexual assault, along with murder, robbery and assault. An assault during a rideshare trip can therefore fall within the criminal law's most serious category of conduct. Even so, the criminal system is built around the accused person and the government, not around the survivor's losses.

If you report an assault to police, what usually follows is an investigation, then possibly an arrest and a charging decision, then prosecution and, if there is a conviction, sentencing. The prosecutor controls every step. The survivor can report, speak with investigators and share what happened. The survivor does not decide whether charges are filed, which charges are chosen, or whether a plea is offered.

A criminal case can end in several ways:

• A conviction, which is a finding by a judge or jury that the accused person is guilty.
• An acquittal, which is a verdict of not guilty.
• A plea, where the accused person admits to a charge, often as part of an agreement with the prosecutor.
• A dismissal, where the charges are dropped or thrown out before a verdict.

A conviction can carry serious consequences for the driver, which may include jail or prison and, depending on the offense and the state, registration as a sex offender. A conviction does not, by itself, pay the survivor anything. In some cases a criminal court may order restitution, which is an order that a convicted person repay a victim for certain losses tied to the crime. Restitution is ordered by the criminal court, is different from a civil damages award, and is a possible outcome rather than a reliable one.

The survivor's role in the criminal case is that of a witness, not a party. The prosecutor represents the government and its interest in enforcing the law, not the survivor personally. A survivor weighing what each path offers may find this the deciding difference: a criminal case can bring accountability under the criminal law, while the survivor's own losses are left to other avenues, such as a civil claim or a compensation program.

What a Civil Claim Can Pursue

In a civil personal-injury case, the survivor is the plaintiff. Where a person has died, the family may bring a wrongful death claim, which is a civil case brought by certain relatives or a representative after a death that someone else is legally responsible for. Who may bring it and what it covers are set by each state's own wrongful-death statute.

A civil claim can name defendants a criminal case cannot. A criminal case is aimed at the person accused of the crime. A civil claim may name the driver, and it may also name the rideshare company. Whether a company bears any civil responsibility is a separate question from whether the driver committed a crime, and it turns on the facts and the legal theories that apply. Naming a company in a claim is not a finding that the company did anything wrong.

Many claims against a business rest on negligence, which is a failure to use the care the law expects. For a survivor, a negligence claim against a company generally turns on whether the company owed the survivor a duty of care, whether it fell short of that duty, whether that shortfall caused the harm, and whether the survivor suffered losses as a result. Each question depends on the evidence. Legal theories that can come up against a rideshare company, such as negligent hiring or responsibility for a driver's acts, are explained in the guide to a rideshare sexual assault lawyer.

Damages are the money a court may order a responsible defendant to pay for the harm caused. The categories the law may allow include medical expenses, lost income, and pain and suffering. In a wrongful-death case, they include the losses that the applicable state's statute defines. Whether any of these are available depends on the facts and on state law, and fault rules, damages rules and filing deadlines differ from state to state. The page on rideshare sexual assault damages explains the categories in more depth.

A survivor considering a civil claim may ask who the possible defendants are, which losses have been documented, and which state's law would apply. Those are questions a conversation with an attorney can help work through.

What a Not-Guilty Verdict Means for a Civil Claim: The Standard of Proof

A frequent worry after a not-guilty verdict, or a case that was never charged, is that the civil door has closed with it. It has not, and the reason is the standard of proof, meaning how convinced the decision-maker has to be.

Criminal cases use proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In plain words, the evidence has to leave the judge or jury firmly convinced of guilt, with no doubt that a reasonable person would act on. It is the highest standard in the legal system, because a person's liberty is at stake.

Civil cases generally use a preponderance of the evidence. This standard is often described as "more likely than not." The question is whether the evidence, taken as a whole, tips the balance even slightly toward the plaintiff's account.

A prosecutor may decline to charge because the evidence may not meet the criminal standard. A jury may acquit because it has some reasonable doubt. Neither result decides whether the same facts could be shown to be more likely than not in a civil case. A criminal acquittal does not bar a civil claim. People found not guilty in criminal court have later been found civilly liable for the same conduct in a separate case.

If your criminal case stalled or ended without a conviction, this is why a civil claim remains an open question rather than a closed one. It is not a prediction about any outcome. Whether a civil claim succeeds depends on its own evidence, measured by its own standard, and what that evidence looks like is something an attorney can review with a survivor.

How Evidence Gathered in One Case Can Affect the Other

The same records often appear in both cases. Police reports, medical records and witness accounts that support a criminal investigation can also become evidence in a civil claim. A statement given to police, or to a company's safety or investigations staff, may later be used in civil proceedings, where both sides can read it and question it.

If you were assaulted during a rideshare trip, the records that usually matter in both settings include:

• Police and incident reports, including any report made through the app.
• Medical records, including records from a forensic exam where one was done.
• Photos and video, such as pictures of injuries or footage from the area.
• Trip records: the receipt, the route, the driver's name and the vehicle.
• Names and contact details of anyone who saw or heard something.
• Messages with the driver or the company.

Rideshare platforms keep their own data, such as GPS location, trip logs and driver records. In a civil case, that data may be requested from the company through the formal evidence-exchange process described in the next section. A criminal investigation may obtain some of the same data through its own legal tools. Where alcohol or drugs were involved, the guide to drug-facilitated assault explains what medical testing can and cannot show.

Because evidence moves between the two cases, the order of steps can matter, including when statements are given, what is put in writing and to whom. That is a point a conversation with an attorney can cover: how a report, an interview or a company inquiry may later fit into a civil claim, and what records a survivor already has.

Victim Compensation Programs: A Third Option

A victim compensation program is a government program, run by a state, that reimburses crime victims for certain costs caused by a crime. It is separate from both the criminal case and any civil lawsuit, and it does not require suing anyone.

The Office for Victims of Crime describes victim compensation as "a direct reimbursement to or on behalf of a crime victim for a wide variety of crime-related expenses such as medical costs, mental health counseling, lost wages, and funeral and burial costs." The OVC administers federal funds that support these programs in all U.S. states, Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. It states that eligibility "varies by state and territory" and is determined by each state program.

For a survivor facing medical bills or time off work, the federal law that funds these programs, 34 U.S.C. § 20102, sets out what an eligible program covers. Under subsection (b), an eligible program offers compensation for medical expenses, "including expenses for mental health counseling and care," lost wages and funeral expenses tied to a compensable crime. The statute also requires that the program "promotes victim cooperation with the reasonable requests of law enforcement authorities, except if a program determines such cooperation may be impacted due to a victim's age, physical condition, psychological state, cultural or linguistic barriers, or any other health or safety concern that jeopardizes the victim's wellbeing." That exception matters to survivors who are not ready, or not safe, to work closely with police.

The same subsection addresses sexual assault evidence directly. Beginning not later than three years after March 15, 2022, a program provides a waiver of its application filing deadline for an otherwise eligible victim whose delay in filing resulted from a delay in testing, or in DNA profile matching from, a sexual assault forensic exam kit or biological material collected as evidence. The program may not require an appeal to consider that waiver.

A compensation program is not a lawsuit. Receiving help from one does not by itself mean a civil claim cannot also be pursued, although how the two interact depends on the state program's rules. A survivor may weigh whether to apply alongside, or instead of, a civil claim, and may ask the state program and an attorney how the two fit together.

When Both Cases Run at the Same Time

When a criminal case and a civil claim come out of the same trip, they often overlap in time, so a survivor can be a witness in one while acting as the plaintiff in the other.

The overlap raises practical questions. In a civil case, discovery is the stage where each side must share information before trial, through documents, written questions and sworn interviews called depositions. A driver facing criminal charges has a Fifth Amendment right not to be forced to give testimony that could be used against him in a criminal prosecution. While a criminal case is pending, a driver may decline to answer civil questions on that ground. Civil courts sometimes slow or pause parts of a civil case while the criminal case moves forward, depending on the court and the circumstances.

Timing therefore becomes a strategic question rather than a fixed rule. Some survivors and their attorneys file a civil claim early, while others wait to see how the criminal case develops. The choice can turn on the evidence, the deadlines in the state where the claim would be filed, which defendants are involved, and the survivor's own needs and readiness.

A common assumption is that a pending criminal case pauses the civil filing deadline. A pending criminal case does not by itself stop a civil deadline from running, and state filing deadlines differ. Anyone waiting on a criminal case may weigh that point when considering whether to hold off on a civil claim. The overview of the rideshare lawsuit process walks through the civil stages in order.

When both cases are in motion, it can help to talk through how one may affect the other. A case evaluation is a conversation with our attorney about the trip, the reports already made and where the criminal case stands, and about what the timing of a civil claim involves.