A California arbitration process has ended with ride-hailing giant Uber being mandated to pay $40 million in damages to the family of 23-year-old Emily Normandin-Parker, a UCLA graduate who was killed by a passing vehicle after her Uber driver forced her out of the car on a busy highway in August 2023.
Court documents detail that Normandin-Parker had booked an Uber ride home alongside a friend, when the friend became ill and vomited inside the vehicle. Both young women were intoxicated at the time of the incident, according to official filings. Normandin-Parker’s parents say their daughter made the safe, responsible decision to book a ride rather than drive herself, a choice that ultimately cost her life.
The driver, identified as Vu Tran, pulled onto the shoulder of the highway to eject both passengers instead of driving to a nearby exit to drop them off in a secure, well-lit location. After leaving the two women stranded on the side of the highway, Tran did not contact emergency services for assistance. Instead, he left the scene to call Uber solely to request a cleaning fee from Normandin-Parker’s family, showing far greater concern for damage to his new vehicle than the safety of his passengers, according to retired judge and arbitrator Richard Stone, who oversaw the five-day arbitration process.
Shortly after being forced out of the car, Normandin-Parker was struck by another passing vehicle and killed instantly. Her family, represented by the national law firm Panish, Shea, Ravipudi, pursued legal action against Uber, which had long argued that its drivers are classified as independent contractors, and therefore the company bears no legal liability for driver actions.
Arbitrator Stone rejected Uber’s liability argument and issued the binding $40 million damage award in favor of the victim’s parents. The law firm for the family also revealed that Uber had initially offered a $10 million out-of-court settlement that included a non-disclosure agreement barring the family from speaking publicly about the incident, which the family outright refused.
In a post-ruling statement to the Wall Street Journal, Uber said it disagreed with the arbitrator’s decision to hold the company legally responsible for the fatal incident. The company added that it has implemented a series of safety updates in recent years, including new technological tools, updated policies, and safety guidance that explicitly instructs drivers to avoid dropping passengers off in dangerous locations like highway shoulders. The BBC has confirmed that it reached out to Uber for additional comment on the ruling, and the company has not yet issued further public statement.
In a statement released after the ruling, Normandin-Parker’s parents said: “Emily did everything Uber tells riders to do – she made the responsible choice not to drive and we trusted Uber to get her home safely. That trust cost our daughter her life.” Arbitrator Stone echoed the family’s sentiment in his ruling, noting that Tran’s choice to strand the young women on a highway shoulder was an egregious lapse of responsibility that could have been avoided entirely with a short detour to a safe drop-off location.