Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco v. Lyft, Inc.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

INDEPENDENT LIVING RESOURCE CENTER SAN FRANCISCO, et al., No. C 19-01438 WHA Plaintiffs,

v.

ORDER DENYING RENEWED

LYFT, INC., MOTION FOR CLASS

CERTIFICATION

Defendant.

The elephant in the room is the class action waiver and agreement to arbitrate. Although we are on the second round of class certification motions, the Court has only just become aware of the elephant in the room, i.e., the class action waiver and arbitration agreement. This explains why plaintiffs’ counsel chose a proposed class definition focused on those who had not downloaded the Lyft app, and excluded actual Lyft customers who had downloaded the app because they would have been subject to the class action waiver and agreement to binding arbitration. The Court has found the proposed class definitions (on both the first motion and the current motion) to be convoluted and hard to apply. The emergence of the waiver and …