California Uber & Lyft Sexual Assault Lawyer

What California Law Gives a Survivor to Work With

California gives survivors a civil claim of their own. Civil Code section 1708.5 defines sexual battery for civil purposes. In its words, a person commits a sexual battery who "acts with the intent to cause a harmful or offensive contact with an intimate part of another, and a sexually offensive contact with that person directly or indirectly results," or who acts with that intent "by use of the person's intimate part," with the same result. The section's list continues past these two items. A civil claim is a lawsuit for money damages brought by the survivor, separate from any criminal case the state may bring.

Section 1708.5 also addresses the relief a court may allow for a sexual battery. What a court may award in a given case depends on the facts proved and on the law that applies to them; no amount is assured.

A second California rule reaches beyond the person who committed the act. Civil Code section 1714(a) states: "Everyone is responsible, not only for the result of his or her willful acts, but also for an injury occasioned to another by his or her want of ordinary care or skill in the management of his or her property or person." This is the general duty of ordinary care, the foundation of a negligence claim. A negligence claim asks four things: whether there was a duty, whether it was breached, whether the breach caused the harm, and what damages followed. Whether those are met always depends on the facts.

California also divides fault rather than treating it as all or nothing. In Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, the Supreme Court of California superseded the all-or-nothing rule of contributory negligence with a system of pure comparative negligence, which assigns liability in direct proportion to the amount of negligence of each of the parties. And Civil Code section 1431.2(a) provides that, in an action based on comparative fault, each defendant's liability for non-economic damages "shall be several only and shall not be joint," limited to the share allocated "in direct proportion to that defendant's percentage of fault."

Together, these sources set the shape of a California case: a claim against the person who committed the act, a possible negligence claim against others, and a way of dividing responsibility among them. For the national picture of how these civil cases work, see the overview of a rideshare sexual assault lawyer on this site.

Why State Oversight of Uber and Lyft Matters to a Survivor

In California, Uber and Lyft fall within a category the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) calls transportation network companies. The CPUC's transportation network companies page describes them this way: TNCs "provide prearranged transportation services for compensation using an online-enabled application or platform (such as smart phone apps) to connect drivers using their personal vehicles with passengers." The same page lists topics the Commission oversees, including TNC licensing requirements, insurance requirements, checking DMV records on TNC drivers, TNC zero tolerance policy requirements, and TNC plans regarding unaccompanied minors, and it points to the Commission's TNC rulemaking, Rulemaking 12-12-011.

Reporting is part of that oversight. The CPUC's required reports page states that, "Pursuant to D.24-08-010 all TNCs are required to submit data reports on an annual basis that cover operations from January 1 through December 31 each year," with data files "due no later than January 30 of the following year." Among the annual report templates the page lists are "Assaults & Harassments," "Accident & Incidents," "Suspended Drivers," "Zero Tolerance" and "Driver Training," along with others. The page explains that earlier annual reports, for years 2014 to 2024, covered a September-to-August period instead.

For a survivor, this matters in a limited but real way. It shows that California treats rideshare companies as a regulated category with reporting duties about assaults and harassment. A required report is a filing obligation; it is not a finding that any company caused any particular person's harm, and nothing on these pages describes what any company did on a specific ride.

Who May Be Responsible When an Assault Happens During a Ride

When a parent or a survivor asks "who is responsible," California law points to more than one possible answer, each resting on a different theory.

The driver is the first. A driver who committed the act may be sued directly under Civil Code section 1708.5, the sexual battery statute described above. That claim focuses on the driver's own intentional conduct.

The company that ran the platform is the second category people ask about. A claim against a platform generally rests on the duty of ordinary care in Civil Code section 1714(a), not on the battery statute. The legal questions there are about the company's own conduct: what care the law required of it in the circumstances, whether that care was given, and whether any failure contributed to the harm. Driver screening is one place these questions often arise; the national page on Uber background check negligence explains how a negligent hiring theory is framed. Naming a company in a lawsuit is an allegation, not a finding, and whether any theory fits a particular ride depends entirely on its facts.

Other people or businesses may come up depending on what happened, and the limitation statute discussed below expressly leaves room for claims against "persons or entities other than the person who committed the crime."

When there is more than one defendant, the fault-sharing rules described earlier come into play, which makes the question of who did what, and what each party knew or controlled, central to how a case is built. A conversation with an attorney can cover which parties were involved in the ride, what records connect each of them to what happened, and how California's fault rules would treat them.

How Long a Survivor Has to File in California, and What Changes the Count

A statute of limitations is the deadline for starting a lawsuit; a claim filed after it can be dismissed no matter how strong it is. For sexual assault, California has a specific rule. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 340.16, "where the assault occurred on or after the plaintiff's 18th birthday, the time for commencement of the action shall be the later of the following": "Within 10 years from the date of the last act, attempted act, or assault with the intent to commit an act, of sexual assault against the plaintiff," or within three years from the date the plaintiff discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, the injury resulting from the assault. Whichever date falls later controls.

Two features of section 340.16 often surprise survivors. First, the section provides that a criminal prosecution or conviction is not required to bring the civil action. Second, it states that it does not limit the availability of causes of action against persons or entities other than the person who committed the crime.

The ten-year period starts on the date of the last act, so where there was more than one act, the last one matters. The three-year period starts with discovery of the injury, which may come later than the ride itself. How those starting points apply to one person's history is a fact-specific question.

Age changes the count too. Code of Civil Procedure section 352 provides in subdivision (a) that if a person entitled to bring an action was, when the cause of action accrued, "under the age of majority or lacking the legal capacity to make decisions, the time of the disability is not part of the time limited for the commencement of the action." Subdivision (b) states that this does not apply to an action against a public entity or public employee on a cause of action for which a claim must first be presented.

Because these dates depend on when acts happened and when an injury was discovered, people often bring a written timeline to a first conversation. If you want to talk through how California's deadlines apply to the dates in your situation, you can request a case evaluation.

What Records Can Help Tell What Happened on the Ride

If you were hurt during a ride, the records that usually matter include medical records from any care received, including a forensic exam if one was done; the app's trip record and receipt, which show the driver, the route and the times; photos or video from the scene or the vehicle; any report made to the platform through the app or otherwise; any police report; and the names and contact information of anyone who saw or heard something before or after the ride. Messages sent to friends or family around the time of the ride sometimes help fix the timeline as well.

These categories line up with what California law asks. Medical records speak to injury and damages. The trip record ties a particular driver and platform to a particular time and place, which matters for the battery claim under Civil Code section 1708.5 and for any negligence theory under section 1714(a). Reports and witness accounts help show what happened and when, which also bears on the deadline rules above.

Some records sit with the survivor, some with a doctor's office or a police department, and some with the company. The CPUC's annual Assaults & Harassments report is a different kind of record: an aggregate filing a TNC makes to the Commission rather than a file about one ride.

No survivor is expected to have all of this, and a case is not defined by a missing photo or an unfiled report. Reporting to police is a choice, and survivors make it, or decline it, for their own reasons. Section 340.16, as noted above, does not require a criminal case for a civil one.

When a Loved One Has Died: A Family's Wrongful Death Claim

A wrongful death claim is a lawsuit brought by certain family members when a person dies because of another's wrongful act or neglect. In California, Code of Civil Procedure section 377.60 states that this cause of action "may be asserted by any of the following persons or by the decedent's personal representative on their behalf," beginning in subdivision (a) with "the decedent's surviving spouse, domestic partner, children, and issue of deceased children, or, if there is no surviving issue of the decedent, the persons, including the surviving spouse or domestic partner, who would be entitled to the property of the decedent by intestate succession." The statute's list continues beyond subdivision (a).

The deadline differs from a survivor's own claim. Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 sets two years for "an action for assault, battery, or injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another." Where a surviving child is the person entitled to sue, the age rule in Code of Civil Procedure section 352, described above, may affect the count, including its public-entity exception.

For a family in grief, these questions arrive at the worst moment: who in the family may bring the claim, whether a personal representative is involved, and which dates start the clock. Any damages would depend on what the law allows and the facts proved, and no outcome is assured. A conversation with an attorney can help a family work through how section 377.60 fits its own relationships and timeline.