Tabatha Means Florida woman sues Lyft alleging driver raped & impregnated her, giving birth to son, lawsuit is filed almost 5 years after alleged incident as both Lyft and Uber face ongoing allegations of sexual abuse at hands of drivers and safety shortfalls.
A Lyft passenger filed a lawsuit in San Francisco this week accusing her driver of repeatedly raping her, resulting in pregnancy and the birth of her son.
Tabatha Means, a Florida native said she requested a ride home through Lyft’s app because she was too intoxicated to drive after a night out. The outing would lead to the woman being sexually preyed on by the app driver, repeatedly raped and impregnated and the birth of her son, who is now nearly 5 years old.
‘Lyft knows its customers are getting raped,’ Means told reporters during a Wednesday press conference. ‘Every day is a struggle for me. At the same time, I need to be a mom to my youngest son. I love my kids so deeply, but there are a lot of mixed emotions.’
Suit seeks $75K in damages and mandatory implementation of tasks
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court Northern District of California accuses the company of negligent hiring, retention, supervision, intentional and negligent misrepresentation, infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract and other allegations. It seeks more than $75,000 in damages.
The suit further asks that Lyft make safety changes, including requiring mandatory dash cameras and mandatory fingerprint background checks.
At the news conference, Means said she was suing because ‘this will continue. It is obvious they don’t care.’
Attorney Rachel Abrams for the plaintiff said, ‘The Lyft driver took advantage of her vulnerable state. What happened to Tabatha has no place in our society.’ The company headquartered in San Francisco continues putting profit over its riders’ safety, she said.
‘Over the years, Lyft has aggressively marketed itself as a safe alternative to driving while intoxicated, and specifically aimed those messages at young women,’ Abrams said in a press release. ‘Lyft’s driver ‘background checks’ are a joke.’
‘It will be just fine and over before you know it,’
Means got into a Lyft driver’s vehicle in Florida on April 28, 2019, and the driver began complimenting her ‘sexy’ looks, the lawsuit states. ‘These inappropriate comments made Plaintiff very uncomfortable, and she was eager for the short ride to end,’ the lawsuit continues. Means was visibly intoxicated, her attorneys said.
Once they reached Means’ home, she rejected the driver’s offer to walk her inside. She insisted that she would walk inside on her own, but the driver still followed her inside. He began sexually assaulting Means and she told him to stop, according to the lawsuit.
‘Plaintiff was terrified that the Lyft driver, a stranger and predator, had entered her residence against her will, especially given her vulnerable state. She was frozen in fear,’ the lawsuit states.
Means claims she begged the driver to stop and at one point he allegedly responded, ‘It will be just fine and over before you know it,’ the complaint states.
About one month after the alleged incident, Means suspected that she was pregnant. She then took an at-home pregnancy test, which revealed a positive result and her doctor confirmed it two weeks later, according to the complaint.
‘Get home safe’: intentional misrepresentation?
The complaint further states that Means endured three hemorrhage episodes before giving birth to her son by emergency C-section. The baby was born at 33 weeks, and he was in the NICU for nearly a month due to his premature birth.
The suit claims Lyft became aware that its drivers were raping female passengers as early as 2015, but the company has not taken serious steps to protect passengers, KRON4 reports.
The company also advertises itself with slogans including, ‘Get Home Safely with Lyft,’ Means’ attorneys said. The lawsuit accuses Lyft of intentional misrepresentation.
‘There is a full-blow sexual predator crisis at Lyft. To maximize profit, Lyft accepts as many new drivers as possible,’ without adequate background checks, Abrams said. ‘Lyft’s attempt to deflect liability is a perfect example of its bad faith handling of this crisis.’
After she gave birth, Means obtained an administrative order from Florida’s Child Support
Services to obtain a DNA sample from the Lyft driver. The test confirmed that he was the father.
Her attorneys said Lyft drivers are largely nonprofessional, untrained, and use their own vehicles. The company fails to warn its riders that their ride may not be safe, the suit claims.
Car app insists it already has secure mandates in place
The Lyft company spokesperson sent a statement to KRON4 in response to the newly filed lawsuit. Safety is a ‘fundamental’ priority, and the sexual assault against Means did not occur while she was using the Lyft app, the spokesperson wrote.
The company’s statement continued, ‘The alleged incident from 2019 did not take place on the Lyft platform while using the Lyft app, but rather involved a separate trip arranged between the individuals involved. Lyft has worked to design policies and features that protect both drivers and riders, and we are always working to make Lyft an even safer platform. Lyft has a dedicated, around-the-clock safety response team, a partnership with ADT to aid in emergencies, and works with leading national organizations to inform our safety policies.’
In a statement to PEOPLE, Lyft said that the company ‘has a protocol to ensure safety of both riders and drivers and are continuing to build on our safety policies, procedures and features.’
‘Before giving a ride on the Lyft platform, all driver-applicants are screened for criminal offenses and driving incidents,’ according to the statement. ‘Our criminal background checks are provided by a third-party company, and include a social security number trace, a nationwide criminal search, a county court records search, a federal criminal court records search as well as a U.S. Department of Justice 50-state sex offender registry search. In addition, Lyft runs annual criminal background checks on all active drivers.’
Both Uber and Lyft record sex abuses
Lyft also said in its statement that the person who has been accused in the alleged incident is no longer driving on the Lyft platform and ‘hasn’t been for years.’
Means according to Abrams now struggles daily with severe depression, anxiety, nightmares, and persistent fear, the lawsuit states.
Means said she never filed a police report because she was too fearful at the time, something she now deeply regrets. She said if she could give other rape survivors advice, she encourages women speaking up.
‘Lyft is trying to blaming me, or push me into saying I wanted this. Or is happened off app. I took a ride thinking I was safe, period. I was there, I know what happened. I don’t want anyone else to be afraid to speak up. Say something, because this will continue,’ Means said.
The lawsuit filed by the law firm Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise demands a jury trial.
Three years ago, Lyft released a safety report disclosing that it had received more than 4,100 reports of sexual assault between 2017 and 2019; it has not released a similar report since.
In August, Law&Crime reported Lyft was facing more than a dozen legal complaints from passengers and drivers alleging sexual and physical assault.
Lyft’s competitor Uber has also faced lawsuits claiming that measures to curb sexual assault have not gone far enough.
