Lyft and Uber filed a lawsuit claiming New York City's new driver retention law would force them to employ dangerous drivers. Read that again. The companies whose entire business model depends on people trusting strangers with cars now argue they can't be trusted to fire the right strangers.
The law apparently makes it harder to terminate drivers. Lyft and Uber say this threatens public safety. They're begging the government to let them protect passengers from the very people they hired, vetted, and put behind the wheel in the first place.
Their lawyers probably charged $800 an hour to write "we need permission to fire bad employees" in fifty pages of legal filigree. That's the lawsuit. Two multibillion-dollar corporations arguing they're too incompetent to manage their own workforce without a judge's blessing.
The passenger safety angle is inspired. Nothing says "we care about your well-being" like admitting in federal court that you currently employ drivers who threaten it. Bold strategy. Turns out the guy who drove you to LaGuardia last month might be one incident report away from getting fired, but the city won't let it happen. Sleep tight.
New York City created a law so stupid it united Lyft and Uber. These companies agree on nothing. They spend millions trying to undercut each other on every corner of every street. But force them to keep drivers they claim are dangerous? Suddenly they're holding hands in front of a judge.
The real victims here are the attorneys who have to stand in court and argue their clients are too stupid to fire people correctly. That's malpractice in reverse.
Somewhere a retail trader is reading this and thinking it's a buying opportunity because litigation means the companies are being proactive about risk management.
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