Can I Sue Uber or Lyft After a Driver Assaulted Me in Missouri?

Often, yes, but the case is usually about the company’s own conduct. Missouri treats rideshare drivers as independent contractors when four conditions are met (RSMo 387.414), so a claim against Uber or Lyft examines how it screened the driver, what it did with earlier complaints and whether it should have removed the driver. The driver can be sued separately.

The driver chose what happened in the car. The company chose who was allowed to be in the driver’s seat, and that choice left a record.

01When Can Uber or Lyft Be Responsible for What a Driver Did?

There are two ways a company can be responsible for harm done by someone who works through it. The first is vicarious liability, where the law holds an employer answerable for an employee’s acts. The second is direct liability, where the company is answerable for its own negligence: hiring a person it should not have hired, keeping a person it should have let go, or failing to control a person it had the power to control.

Missouri’s rideshare statute makes the first path hard. It says a driver is not the company’s agent unless a written contract says so (RSMo 387.416), and it defines a rideshare company as one that is not deemed to “own, control, direct, operate, or manage” the drivers on its app, except by written contract (RSMo 387.400(4)).

The second path does not depend on employment. A company may be responsible when it let a driver onto the platform whom a reasonable check would have kept off, or when it was told about a danger and left the driver on the road. That is where most of these cases are built. In a case brought by a driver’s family, the Missouri Court of Appeals allowed negligence and product liability claims to proceed directly against Lyft, holding that the petition alleged a duty to protect against a third party’s crime and that a ridesharing app can be a product (Ameer v. Lyft, Inc., 711 S.W.3d 534, Mo. App. E.D. 2025).

02What Does Missouri Require the Companies to Check Before a Driver Starts?

Before a driver can accept rides, the company must run, or hire someone to run, a local and national criminal background check that includes a multistate criminal records search and the U.S. Department of Justice National Sex Offender public website, and must review the driver’s driving history (RSMo 387.420.1).

The statute then lists who may not drive. Among them: anyone convicted within the past seven years of a sexual offense, an act of violence, use of a motor vehicle to commit a felony, fraud or theft, and anyone who is a match on the national sex offender website (RSMo 387.420.2). A company that let a disqualified driver onto the app faces an obvious question about why.

The harder cases sit in the statute’s gaps. A sexual offense conviction from eight years ago is outside the seven-year window. An arrest that never became a conviction does not appear on the list. Neither does misconduct that was reported to another rideshare company, an employer or a school but never to police. The statute sets what the company must check. It does not say that checking those things is all a reasonable company would do, and a negligent hiring claim asks whether the company knew or should have known of the driver’s “dangerous proclivities” (Reed v. Kelly, 37 S.W.3d 274, Mo. App. E.D. 2000).

03What if the Company Had Complaints About the Driver Before?

Then the claim may be for negligent retention. In Missouri its elements are the same as negligent hiring: the company knew or should have known the driver was dangerous, and its failure to act caused the harm (Reed v. Kelly). The warning has to fit the harm. In Reed, a security guard’s earlier fights were held too different from a sexual offense to put his employer on notice. Earlier rider reports of sexual comments, unwanted touching or a driver who would not let a passenger out of the car are the kind of history that matters.

Missouri law tells the companies exactly what to do in two situations. When a company receives information that a driver has been convicted of a sexual offense or an act of violence, it must “immediately revoke” the driver’s access and notify the Missouri Department of Revenue (RSMo 387.436.1). And when a rider reports suspected impairment, the company must suspend the driver while it investigates (RSMo 387.418).

The statute does not set a mandatory suspension rule for a rider’s complaint of sexual misconduct. What the company did with that kind of complaint is governed by its own policies and by ordinary negligence law. That makes the company’s complaint file, its internal investigation notes and its deactivation decisions the center of the case.

A complaint that the company logged, reviewed and closed is not a dead end. It may be the strongest evidence in the case.

Negligent supervision is the third theory, and the least natural fit. Missouri’s rule is written around an employer’s duty to control a worker on its premises or using its property (Reed v. Kelly). A rideshare driver uses his or her own car, so a supervision claim has to be built from what the company actually controls through the app: who is matched with whom, what the app tracks during the ride and what the company does when something looks wrong.

04Does It Matter That Drivers Are Called Independent Contractors?

It matters for vicarious liability. Missouri says drivers are independent contractors, not employees, if the company does not set required hours, does not bar drivers from other apps or other work, and the two agree in writing to contractor status (RSMo 387.414).

The four conditions are facts, not labels. Outside the rideshare statute, Missouri decides whether someone is an employee by asking “whether the person sought to be charged as master had the right or power to control and direct the physical conduct of the other in the performance of the act,” and the court looks at the right to control, not only control actually exercised (Bargfrede v. American Income Life Insurance Co., 21 S.W.3d 157, Mo. App. W.D. 2000). Bargfrede also held that when the facts about that relationship are disputed, the question goes to a jury rather than being decided by the judge.

Even where employment is proven, vicarious liability reaches acts “committed within the course and scope” of the employment (Bargfrede), and Missouri courts have held that intentional sexual misconduct falls outside it as a matter of law (Gibson v. Brewer, 952 S.W.2d 239, Mo. banc 1997; P.S. v. Psychiatric Coverage, Ltd., 887 S.W.2d 622, Mo. App. E.D. 1994). Missouri also says rideshare companies and drivers are not common carriers (RSMo 387.402), so the rules written for carriers do not apply by statute. Both points push these cases toward the company’s own negligence.

05Does the $1 Million Rideshare Insurance Cover an Assault?

Probably not in the way it covers a crash. The coverage Missouri requires is automobile liability insurance for death, bodily injury and property damage during a ride (RSMo 379.1702.3), and automobile policies commonly exclude harm the insured intended, which is how an assault is usually characterized.

That is why the claim against the company for its own negligence matters so much in an assault case: it does not depend on the auto policy. Our rideshare page at /car-accidents/rideshare-accidents/ explains the crash coverage tiers and the other rideshare statutes.

06Can I Sue the Driver Personally?

Yes. Assault and battery are intentional torts, and the driver is personally responsible for them. The claim must be filed within two years (RSMo 516.140). A negligence claim against the company generally has five years as a claim for “injury to the person” (RSMo 516.120(4)). Treat the shorter date as the real one until a lawyer has looked at your facts.

Punitive damages are possible against the driver on clear and convincing evidence of intentional harm (RSMo 510.261), and the cap in RSMo 510.265 does not apply when the defendant pleads guilty to or is convicted of a felony from the same acts. Our article at /blog/punitive-damages-drunk-driving-accident-missouri/ explains the standard and the cap in detail.

Against the company, Missouri allows punitive damages for an agent’s act only in listed situations, including where “the agent was unfit” and the company was reckless in employing or retaining him or her (RSMo 510.261.3(2)). The company will answer that the driver was never its agent. Both positions turn on the same screening and complaint records.

What if You Were Under 21?

Missouri pauses both clocks for a person who was under 21 when the claim arose; the time starts running at 21 (RSMo 516.170). The criminal case runs on its own separate deadlines, and the civil deadline does not wait for the criminal case to finish.

07What Is the Federal Uber Sexual Assault Litigation?

In October 2023, the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized passenger sexual assault cases against Uber in the Northern District of California as In re: Uber Technologies, Inc., Passenger Sexual Assault Litigation, MDL No. 3084, before Judge Charles R. Breyer. The Panel described common questions including Uber’s knowledge of the prevalence of sexual assault by its drivers and whether it failed to conduct adequate background checks, train drivers, adopt adequate safety measures and respond to complaints.

A multidistrict litigation is a pretrial arrangement, not a class action. Each survivor keeps an individual case, and related federal cases filed elsewhere, including in Missouri, can be transferred into it as “tag-along” actions. In February 2026 the Panel created a parallel proceeding for Lyft, MDL No. 3171, before Judge Rita F. Lin in the same court. Both orders note related coordinated proceedings in California state court. Bellwether trials in the Uber proceeding began in 2026.

Whether a Missouri survivor’s case belongs in federal court, in the MDL or in a Missouri circuit court such as the 22nd Judicial Circuit in the City of St. Louis is a strategic decision. It depends on who is sued, where the parties are citizens and which claims are brought.

08Will an Arbitration Clause Keep My Case Out of Court?

The terms a rider accepts in the app can include an arbitration clause. For a sexual assault dispute that arose or accrued on or after March 3, 2022, federal law lets the person alleging the assault choose to make a predispute arbitration agreement unenforceable, for a case filed under federal or state law (9 U.S.C. § 402(a)).

The statute defines a “sexual assault dispute” as one involving a nonconsensual sexual act or sexual contact (9 U.S.C. § 401(3)). It also says a court, not an arbitrator, decides whether the law applies, even if the agreement tries to send that question to arbitration (9 U.S.C. § 402(b)).

The companies’ own terms matter too. Lyft’s published terms say it will not require arbitration of individual sexual assault claims brought in court, and Uber’s published terms exclude individual claims of sexual assault from arbitration. Where the federal statute applies, a federal appeals court has held that it bars arbitration of the entire case, not only the assault claim (Bruce v. Adams & Reese, LLP, 168 F.4th 367, 6th Cir. 2026), and the Missouri Court of Appeals has held the same: the agreement is invalid as to the entire case, not only certain claims (State ex rel. Waddell v. Atkins, No. WD89050, Mo. App. W.D. Aug. 11, 2026). The federal appeals court that covers Missouri has held that a dispute can arise after the assault itself, when the survivor first asserts a claim, so an assault before March 3, 2022 is not automatically outside the law (Famuyide v. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., 111 F.4th 895, 8th Cir. 2024). The rider terms in effect on the day of the ride still need to be read before anything is filed.

09What Records Does the Company Hold, and How Do You Keep Them?

Nearly everything that proves the company’s knowledge is in the company’s hands: the trip record and GPS trace, the driver’s identity and background check file, prior rider complaints about that driver, in-app messages, the investigation notes and the driver’s deactivation history, including any earlier suspension and reinstatement.

You cannot get most of it by asking the state. Information a company gives the Department of Revenue about a driver’s convictions is exempt from Missouri’s open records law (RSMo 387.436.4). It comes out through discovery in a lawsuit, and only if it still exists. Missouri requires driver records to be kept only until one year after the driver’s relationship with the company ends (RSMo 387.428). If the company deactivates the driver after your report, that clock may already be running.

A preservation letter to the company and its registered agent names the trip, the driver and the categories of records, and puts the company on notice that they relate to a claim. It should go out early, before routine deletion schedules reach the file.

Should You Report It in the App?

Yes, in writing, and keep a copy of what you sent and what came back. A report creates the company’s own record that it was told, on a date it cannot dispute. Uber’s own safety report says both riders and drivers report sexual assault on its platform; it counted 2,717 reports in its five most serious sexual assault categories across more than 1.8 billion US trips in 2021 and 2022. The company has a reporting system because it knows these reports come in.

An app report is not a police report and it is not legal advice. The company’s safety team works for the company, and what you write may be used to evaluate the company’s exposure. Our hotel assault article at /blog/can-i-sue-a-hotel-for-an-assault-in-missouri/ explains why a civil claim does not need a police report and how survivors keep their names out of public court records.

10When Should You Talk to a Lawyer?

Before you give the company a detailed statement beyond the first report, before you agree to any settlement or release it offers, and while the driver’s records are still inside the retention window. You do not need to have decided anything else first. Survivors whose claims involve more than the ride itself can read about the firm’s broader practice at /sexual-assault/.

Call The Injury Counsel at (314) 727-7220 for a free, confidential consultation. We will tell you which deadlines apply to you, whether an arbitration clause is in play and which records need a preservation letter now.