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Uber has settled the third federal bellwether case in its sprawling passenger sexual assault litigation just days before opening statements were scheduled to begin in Texas, Bloomberg Law reports.
The confidential settlement was announced Oct. 2 after a jury had already been selected for a three-week trial in the Western District of Texas. The case was part of MDL No. 3084, the federal multidistrict litigation now containing 4,916 pending Uber passenger sexual assault cases as of Oct. 1, 2026.
The settlement marks a change from Uber’s approach in the first two federal bellwether cases, both of which went to verdict and both of which resulted in findings against the company.
The first federal bellwether trial ended in February 2026 with an $8.5 million award to a survivor who said an Uber driver raped her when she was 19.
The Phoenix jury found Uber legally responsible because the driver acted as Uber’s apparent agent, although jurors rejected separate negligence and defective-design claims and did not award punitive damages.
(Read our coverage of the first federal Uber bellwether verdict.)
That result was significant because it showed that Uber could be held financially responsible for a driver’s assault even when a jury did not find that Uber itself negligently screened or supervised the driver.
The second federal bellwether trial, held in North Carolina in April, also ended with a plaintiff verdict. The damage award was only $5,000.
Learn more about the MDL, bellwether trials, recent verdicts and possible legal options in our Uber Sexual Assault Lawsuit Guide.
That difference was not simply a matter of one jury valuing a survivor’s experience less than another.
The two cases involved dramatically different conduct.
In the Arizona case, the plaintiff alleged rape. In the North Carolina case, the passenger testified that the driver grabbed her upper inner thigh and made a sexual comment near the end of the ride. The jury found that the driver committed battery and that Uber was legally responsible for his conduct.
The North Carolina case involved unwanted sexual touching, but not the type of violent sexual assault alleged in the Arizona case. The claimed injuries, emotional harm, treatment needs and potential future damages were therefore very different.
(Read our coverage of the second federal Uber bellwether trial.)
For Uber driver sexual assault survivors, the broader takeaway in the MDL is that the first two federal bellwethers do not establish a standard dollar value for Uber sexual assault cases. They show instead that damages can vary depending on the severity of the misconduct, the survivor’s injuries, the available evidence and the legal claims presented to the jury.
The $5,000 verdict may nevertheless have been important for plaintiffs because the jury still held Uber responsible for the driver’s conduct. The judge had also ruled that Uber qualified as a common carrier under North Carolina law, a finding Uber has challenged on appeal.
Texas Case Settled After Jury Selection
The third federal bellwether involved allegations that an Uber driver sexually assaulted a passenger during a 2020 ride.
The plaintiff alleged that Uber’s background-check process failed to identify publicly available information showing that the driver had a pending sexual assault charge before he joined the platform.
The driver, Victor Huynh Le, was later convicted of sexual assault in Texas and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Shortly before the settlement, the judge ruled that Uber could not tell jurors that a military background check had also failed to identify the driver’s pending charge. Uber had hoped to use that evidence to argue that its own background-screening process was consistent with other institutions’ practices.
The case settled less than 48 hours after jury selection and before opening statements.
The terms remain confidential.
Judge Has Pressed Uber to Consider Broader Settlement
The settlement also comes after U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer publicly questioned Uber’s strategy of resolving cases in small groups while thousands remain pending.
At a September hearing, Breyer urged Uber to reconsider its approach and suggested that a broader resolution may be necessary.
The federal litigation has grown quickly. Official Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation data shows 4,916 cases pending as of Oct. 1, up from 4,588 one month earlier.
Bellwether trials are designed to give both sides information about how juries may evaluate liability, evidence and damages. They do not determine the outcomes of other cases, but they can have a major influence on settlement negotiations.
California State Cases Have Produced a Different Result
The federal MDL is not the only major Uber sexual assault litigation underway.
Hundreds of similar claims are also coordinated in California state court.
The first California bellwether trial reached a verdict in September 2025. Jurors found that Uber had been negligent in the safety measures it provided to passengers but concluded that the company’s negligence was not a substantial factor in causing the plaintiff’s assault.
As a result, Uber was not ordered to pay damages.
(Read our coverage of the first California Uber sexual assault trial.)
That state-court outcome illustrates a different legal hurdle from the two federal cases. A jury may believe Uber could have done more to protect riders yet still conclude that those failures did not legally cause a particular assault.
Taken together, the first three verdicts across the federal and state litigation have produced three very different outcomes.
