Search v. Uber Technologies, Inc.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

JAMES E. BOASBERG, United States District Judge

For generations, parents have admonished their children not to get into cars with strangers. See, e.g., Forrest Gump (Paramount Pictures 1994) (“Mama said not to be taking rides from strangers.”). But in today’s “sharing economy,” that warning is an anachronism: every day, millions of Americans summon unknown drivers with the press of a button. At the same time, the danger of taking a ride from a stranger has not entirely disappeared. As with other growing pains of twenty-first-century economics, courts must now determine what…