Uber opens a new tab has agreed to pay A$271.8 million ($178 million) to settle a lawsuit filed by Australian taxi operators and drivers who say they lost income when the company moved into the country, it said in Monday law firm.
The deal is the fifth largest in Australia, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers said in a statement.
A class action was filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2019 on behalf of more than 8,000 taxi and car-for-hire owners and drivers, accusing Uber of breaching laws that require taxi and car-for-hire companies to be licensed.
Uber’s entry into the market in 2012 took away revenue from licensed taxi drivers while destroying the value of the licenses they paid for, according to the suit.
Uber said it never knowingly broke the law.
“Uber fought tooth and nail at every point along the way,” Maurice Blackburn director Michael Donelly said in a statement.
“After years of refusing to do the right thing by those we say they hurt, Uber blinked,” he said.
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An Uber spokesman said in an email that the company had contributed to the state’s taxi compensation systems since 2018 “and with today’s proposed settlement, we have put these old issues firmly in our past.”
Uber did not disclose the proposed settlement in its response.
Former lawmaker and taxi driver Rod Barton, a member of the class action lawsuit, said the settlement confirmed his belief that Uber knowingly evaded local taxi licensing rules.
“They knew very well that they had to have their drivers and their vehicles fully licensed,” Barton told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“They chose not to do that and they did a lot of things that gave them a commercial advantage against the taxi industry that built their strong position,” he added.
The law was changed in 2015, allowing Uber to operate without taxi licenses, while state governments introduced compensation schemes for taxi drivers and license holders.
