What the ? Come on ,They don't get to decide what law they should follow. Or maybe they know that all these lawsuits cost them less than having to respect the law, I don't know. All I can say is that Uber displays an unbelievable level of arrogance.
Remember, just because it "seems obvious" that they are "somehow" a company related to "transportation", doesn't make them a "transportation service" by whatever definition is used by the government for transportation service company regulations (or whatever that law is called).
As much as I think individuals should follow the intention of laws, rather than the 'letter'. We have to be realistic. Either we petition to have the 'letter' of the law changed to encompass what we 'think' the definition should be, or we accept that the definition is a reasonable demarcation of what constitutes and doesn't constitute a transportation company.
And lets not mix emotions into it in some sort of fit of outrage that 'they dare not' pretend like they're not a 'transportation company' when we think it's obvious.
#Edit. Typo.
No, Swipe is an app that allows people to charge for driving services. Uber is how the car is ordered, ride metered and payment processed. Oh, and the people driving are Uber's 1099s.
I don't have the background to say anything about whether the court will hold Uber liable in this suit. But on the question of classifying Uber, I find it incredibly unlikely the court will be receptive to the idea they're functionally equivalent to swipe.
That's been Uber's stance from day 1.
This kind of thing isn't going to fly in court. Judges have a long history of following the duck principle: if it looks like a taxi company and acts like a taxi company, it's probably a taxi company. Like any observant human, the judge is going to conclude that Uber is a taxi company and will require that it follow the same laws as other taxi companies. This will be the simplest case on the judge's docket this year.
There's also the salient difference that those takeaways are not being paid as contractors by Just Eat (if anything it's probably the other way around). If they were, Just Eat would be a takeaway. If Just Eat made a piece of software for sale that other companies could use to provide takeaway resale services, it would be a technology company.
The difference is that with UberX, Uber is the service from end to end; they perform every single role of the taxi firm; they tell the drivers where to go, they pay the drivers, etc.