A Florida woman, Tabatha Means, has filed a Lawsuit against the famous rideshare company Lyft. She alleged sexual assault by a certain Lyft driver back in 2019. The plaintiff filed the lawsuit on January 10, 2024, at the California Northern District Court.
According to Means, she left her kids at home with a nanny to join heat a saidar. Then, the ex-husband ordered a ride to take her back to where she was staying.
Upon confirming her ride, the driver asked her to sit in front, where he kept touching her inappropriately, she told the court. Meanwhile, the nanny whom she hired to watch her kids left when she ordered the ride.
On arriving at the destination, the complainant further narrated that the driver allegedly followed her inside under the guise of helping her as she was intoxicated.
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Means claimed to have protested, but her protests were ignored. So, when they got inside, she revealed that the driver assaulted her multiple times.
Means communicated how the incident had affected her. Plus she also talked about a child who came out of the ordeal.
During a CNN interview, she said, “Every day is a battle. I cannot imagine a day of my life without that little boy that was a surprise and not expected, but he is everything to me… But every day is still hard.”
She also mentioned that the encounter has affected her mentally and financially. The complainant alleges that she had a difficult pregnancy that produced the child at 33 weeks of gestation against the average length of 40 weeks.
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Lyft, on the other hand, had a different story to tell. Lyft claims that it had little to do with the ordeal and the assault happened during an offline ride.
The company also alleged that the offline ride was the second time the complainant saw the driver that night, claiming that she completed an official ride with the driver hours before the incident. But Means reported seeing the driver just once, which she claimed was the ride her ex-husband ordered from the bar to where she was staying.
Lyft, however, kept hammering on the safety of its rides. They claim that cases of sexual assault are rare during their services.
They also noted that they have put measures in place to assure the safety of both drivers and riders. The company said this in reference to the app’s features that allow riders to share their ride so that a third party can monitor the ride and an emergency alert feature.
Although genetic testing revealed the driver in question is 99.999999998% the father of Means’s son, Means revealed that she wants nothing to do with him. She claimed she couldn’t speak out earlier than she did because she didn’t think anyone would believe her.
But before her son’s first birthday, she had a change of mind and took the initiative by searching “Lyft assault” on Google. There, she met Abrams, who works for a firm that fights for victims like her.
Due to how much time had passed since the assault occurred, Abrams advised that winning a civil case against Lyft is more likely than a criminal case against the driver. Tabatha’s case is only one out of dozens of lawsuits the rideshare company will have to surmount every year. But the rideshare company is pretty upbeat about its chances of beating the charges.
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