Hochul’s Insurance Push Follows Uber’s National Playbook

Gov. Hochul is raking in cash from Uber as she follows its state-by-state playbook to erode the rights of car crash victims.

By Kevin Duggan

Gov. Hochul’s re-election campaign is raking in cash from Uber as she follows the tech giant’s nationwide playbook to erode the rights of car crash victims one state at a time.

New Yorkers are just the latest target of a multi-state effort by Uber to diminish the amount of money crash victims can recover when they do go to court, the Lever previously reported. The company is flooding politicians across the country with cash and “affordability” talking points to sell policy changes that will boost its profits by making it harder for people injured and maimed by its drivers to sue the company for damages.

“I’ve seen a lot of companies – I’ve been doing this for 35 years – and this is as greedy a company as there is,” Jamie Court, the president and chairman of Consumer Watchdog, a California-based consumer advocacy organization, told Streetsblog. “This is a company that’s zealously pursuing a radical rewriting of the motor vehicle laws.” …

Companies routinely set up of support groups with “consumer-friendly” names like Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, a tobacco industry front back in the 1990s, according to a review by the Center for Justice & Democracy, a national consumer organization at the New York Law School. Uber’s group of choice in New York is called Citizens for Affordable Rates, or CAR.

“They’re following a playbook that is decades old,” said Joanne Doroshow, the executive director of the Center For Justice & Democracy at New York Law School. “Large corporations and industries hide behind front groups in order to pressure mostly state lawmakers to make it more difficult for people to sue or to reduce compensation to victims, which also makes it more difficult for them to find attorneys to take their case.” …

Companies generally want to avoid trials at all costs because they can expose bad practices, said Doroshow of the Center for Justice & Democracy.

“It forces disclosure of documents into the mainstream, things that they would prefer to keep quiet,” Doroshow said. “Litigation has been critical for exposing safety problems in vehicles.”

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