John and Georgia McGinty-who sustained serious injuries in a 2022 Uber car accident-have been barred from taking their ride-hailing company to court. It was ruled that the couple indirectly accepted the company’s terms of service, which included forced arbitration, through a surprising twist of sorts via their then-12-year-old daughter.
This was the case in early 2022 for the McGintys, coming home from dinner in an Uber. The driver, they say, ran a red light and thereby caused a severe accident. Both John and Georgia suffered life-changing injuries. “We went right through the light, and there was a loud bang and a hard crash,” says John. They were both taken to the hospital with several broken bones, serious internal injuries to Georgia.
She vividly remembers the chaos at the scene: “They kind of got me out on a stretcher, and it was like pouring rain on top of me, and I could hear John calling to me from the other ambulance.”
The McGintys filed a complaint against Uber, moving to hold the company responsible for their injuries and seeking all damages available to them due to the negligence of their driver. Uber responded by invoking its terms-of-service agreement containing an agreement to arbitrate disputes mandatorily until their case finally hit a roadblock. The clause barred the couple from pursuing their case in court and forced them to settle the dispute through arbitration-a generally private process, which usually goes in favor of companies.
The McGintys argued that, personally, they had never accepted Uber’s latest terms of service, which included the arbitration clause. Instead, they said, their 12-year-old daughter accepted the terms one night when she used her mother’s account to place an order through Uber Eats for a pizza. The court ruled otherwise, explaining that Georgia had accepted the terms several times earlier, tracing back to 2015. The arbitration clause was valid in nature, thus enforceable.
Beyond that, the case has fueled a broader debate over the controversial nature of arbitration clauses in consumer agreements. Arbiration clauses, often buried deep in long and complex terms of service, generally waive an individual’s right to trial by jury and instead compel them into private arbitration with disputes. Consumer advocates and legal experts have long criticized such clauses, saying they limit consumers’ access to the courts and disproportionably favor corporations.
As legal analyst Danny Cevallos said, “They won’t get bad press, and an arbitrator is usually less likely to give out a big damages award than a jury of someone’s peers.”
The McGinty case has been compared with several others that have attained headlines, in which companies resort to using the same kind of arbitration clauses to wriggle out of litigation. Recently, Disney attempted to invoke a similar clause in a wrongful death lawsuit before ultimately caving to public pressure and waiving its execution.
Undeterred, the McGintys plan to appeal. They hope the high court will consider the legality of arbitration clauses in consumer agreements, arguing they often undermine consumer rights. “I think that we need, as a society, to move to try to protect consumers,” Georgia McGinty said in a recent interview.
If they prevail, the classmates’ appeal could result in a landmark decision that might establish a legal precedent, one perhaps strengthening consumer protections and changing how businesses use arbitration clauses in their terms of service.
The McGintys’ fight has put a spotlight on the fine print most consumers never read in using services like Uber. Their case could spur reforms to eliminate surprises in arbitration clauses and make clear what rights consumers are giving up when they click to accept the terms of service.
