Uber arbitration award over Emily Normandin-Parker's death

Emily Normandin-Parker, 23, was struck and killed on a California freeway after Uber driver Vu Tran left her & a friend at a triangular gore point beside an off-ramp following an argument over a cleaning fee, an arbitrator found. Retired judge Richard A. Stone, the arbitrator, ordered Uber & Tran to pay her parents $40 million, $20 million to each, in a July 2026 award. In a statement to ABC News, Uber said the arbitrator was wrong in holding Uber legally responsible for the tragic events of that night.

Emily Normandin-Parker's death on State Route 73

Normandin-Parker, a 2022 graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, was riding home in an Uber with her friend Luna Moore after a night out on August 12, 2023, when Moore became sick & vomited in the car. Tran pulled over on State Route 73 in Orange County at a gore point, according to the award. The award states that Normandin-Parker wandered into traffic in an inebriated state & was struck and killed after Tran pulled into the gore point and argued with Moore.

Stone described the gore point as an unsafe and illegal area, citing Vehicle Code section 21718, and wrote that Tran himself admitted this at the hearing. He found that Tran could have taken the nearby MacArthur Boulevard exit & stopped in a safe location. Stone also wrote that Tran knew both women were intoxicated & had argued with Moore over a cleaning fee before leaving them at the gore point. According to the award, GPS data showed, notwithstanding the modest margin of error of several meters, that Tran drove near Normandin-Parker's body as he left & then pulled off at the next exit to call Uber about recovering the cleaning fee.

Stone called Tran's testimony on the critical matters largely, in fact, almost entirely, incredible and unbelievable and found that Tran showed far more worry for his new car than he did for his passengers. He also wrote that he could not confidently determine everything that happened in those moments because no one presented entirely credible testimony.

On page 6 of the award the arbitrator writes that Tran showed no concern for Normandin-Parker's whereabouts despite knowing she had exited the vehicle and was intoxicated.

Background

California voters approved Proposition 22 in 2020. The measure added section 7451 to the Business and Professions Code on November 3, 2020. Section 7451 provides that:

... an app-based driver is an independent contractor and not an employee or agent with respect to the app-based driver's relationship with a network company if the following conditions are met ...

Uber, DoorDash, Lyft & Instacart were among the companies that spent more than $200 million on the ballot initiative, CalMatters reported.

Lawsuit

Claims

Moore filed a complaint in Orange County Superior Court on September 25, 2023, in case number 30-2023-01351580-CU-PO-CJC; the court lists Tran & Uber Technologies, Inc. as defendants. Uber filed a stipulation to arbitrate & stay the action on January 25, 2024, and the court entered an order on the stipulation on January 31, 2024. On August 10, 2026, Uber filed a motion to enforce stipulation & an ex parte application in Moore's court case, and that same day Uber & Tran filed a notice of withdrawal of a motion. The court has scheduled an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) review hearing in the case for October 1, 2026, & the register also lists a motion scheduled for February 18, 2027 in Department C34 at the Central Justice Center.

Rows 28 and 33 of the register of actions, printed from the court's Civil Case Access portal, record the stipulation as an 86-page filing and the order on the stipulation to arbitrate as three pages.

Normandin-Parker's parents, Carol Normandin & Ken Parker, were claimants in the arbitration alongside Moore, and Uber & Tran were the respondents; the award is captioned Signature Resolution. The parents' claims against Uber included negligence and negligent training, retention, and supervision.

Lawyers for the parents at Panish Shea Ravipudi said evidence presented during the arbitration showed Uber had received previous complaints about Tran's driving.

Rebuttal

During the five-day hearing, held between March 23 and 29, 2026, Uber argued that Tran was an independent contractor under California law & that the company should not be held accountable for his actions. Stone quoted Uber's closing brief, which described the company as:

a technology company that provides a software platform connecting riders with independent third-party drivers who perform the transportation.

CalMatters reported that in a filing, Uber argued that the incident:

was the result of Moore and Normandin-Parker's extreme intoxication, which was existent because of Moore's and Normandin-Parker's intentional conduct, not Tran's driving.

Uber also said in a filing that Tran had a valid driver's license & passed its background check, and that it had no duty to train him beyond that because he was an independent contractor. Tran argued that he responded reasonably to a perceived sudden emergency caused by the passengers' prior excessive drinking, of which he said he was unaware, & that he could not anticipate that Normandin-Parker would leave his vehicle and wander into traffic.

Outcome

Stone found Uber vicariously liable for Tran's negligence as a common carrier, a status he wrote carries a non-delegable safety duty. CalMatters describes vicarious liability as indirect liability for the actions of another. Stone wrote that it is beyond reasonable dispute that Uber is an app-based transportation company which provides services to the general public for standardized fees. He rejected Uber's argument that it is merely a technology company. Stone did not decide the claimants' other negligence theories against Uber, writing that doing so would not change the damages.

The award cites California Civil Code section 2168, which reads:

Every one who offers to the public to carry persons, property, or messages, excepting only telegraphic messages, is a common carrier of whatever he thus offers to carry.

In a March 8, 2026 ruling on Uber's motions for summary judgment, Stone rejected Uber's Proposition 22 argument. CalMatters reported that Stone wrote voters who passed Proposition 22 in 2020 could not have intended to do away with Uber's liability for its drivers' actions. His July 2026 award states that Prop. 22 does not immunize Uber from vicarious liability. On Proposition 51, the award states:

... Proposition 51 (Cal. Civ. Code § 1431.2), which generally limits each defendant's liability for noneconomic damages to that defendant's own proportionate share of fault, does not apply to reduce or eliminate a common carrier's vicarious liability for its driver's negligence.

The award sets its Proposition 22 ruling under a capitalized heading reading PROPOSITION 22 DOES NOT SHIELD UBER FROM VICARIOUS LIABILITY.

Normandin & Parker were each awarded $20 million, with Stone finding Uber and Tran jointly and severally liable. He found Tran liable to Moore for intentional infliction of emotional distress & held Uber jointly and severally liable with Tran on that claim as a common carrier. Moore was awarded $300,000. Stone found that Normandin-Parker did not endure pre-death pain and suffering & wrote that the issue of punitive damages was therefore moot; he awarded none.

The award's closing section is headed AWARD and states each sum to the cent, at $20,000,000.00 and $300,000.00.

Stone wrote that he was troubled by how Uber approaches rider safety in numerous respects, including driver training & the handling and investigation of customer complaints. He expressed hope that Uber will learn from this tragic incident and change the pertinent policies and procedures, and added:

Should it fail to do so, it no doubt engages in that approach at its own substantial risk.

Uber's response

An Uber spokesperson said that Tran, who can no longer drive for Uber, had completed thousands of trips without any unsafe drop-offs, freeway stops or rider injury, according to CalMatters. Uber said in a statement quoted by BBC News:

We have continued to strengthen our approach to safety over the years, through new technology, policies and safeguards informed by safety experts, including additional guidance to drivers about avoiding drop-offs in unsafe locations.

Consumer response

Ken Parker told Good Morning America:

We didn't have much time to absorb the award before Uber almost immediately started contending that it could not be made public and then sent an agreement to us requiring non-disparagement, the $10 million penalty for saying anything bad about Uber.

Panish Shea Ravipudi, the law firm representing the parents, said in a release that the settlement agreement Uber proposed would have prevented them from making even truthful statements about the company's connection to Normandin-Parker's death, with a $10 million liquidated damages penalty each time they did. CBS News Los Angeles quoted Parker: We turned it down because we would never accept that kind of condition. The Guardian reported that Uber said it ultimately did not pursue confidentiality in this case.

The parents said in a statement:

Emily did everything Uber tells riders to do, she made the responsible choice not to drive and we trusted Uber to get her home safely.

Normandin-Parker's family established the Emily Normandin-Parker Foundation to honor her memory & advocate for stronger rideshare safety protections, and the family intends to use proceeds of the case to fund the Foundation, according to the firm's release.

Uber's arbitration terms

Uber's U.S. Terms of Use, last modified August 12, 2026, open with this warning in capital letters:

IMPORTANT: PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT BY AGREEING TO THESE TERMS YOU ARE WAIVING YOUR RIGHT TO SEEK RELIEF IN A COURT OF LAW AND WAIVING YOUR RIGHT TO HAVE A JURY TRIAL ON YOUR CLAIMS.

The notice appears on the Terms of Use page below the list of the agreement's nine numbered sections.

Section 2 states that, except for the claims listed in Section 2(b), any dispute between a user & Uber will be settled by binding individual arbitration between you and Uber, and not in a court of law. The agreement also binds third parties:

This Arbitration Agreement shall be binding upon, and shall include any claims brought by or against any third parties, including but not limited to your guests, spouse, domestic partner, heirs, estate, third-party beneficiaries and assigns, where their underlying claims arise out of or relate to your use of the Services or their use of the Services at your invitation.

Arbitration procedure under Uber's terms and California law

Uber's Terms of Use provide that for disputes arising in California the arbitration will be administered by ADR Services, Inc. under ADR's Arbitration Rules in effect at the time the claim is brought, unless the parties agree otherwise in writing. One arbitrator hears the case, selected in accordance with the ADR Rules. Where ADR cannot or will not administer a California dispute, the terms require the parties to meet and confer to select a neutral arbitration provider. Once such a provider is agreed upon or appointed, the terms provide that an arbitrator will be appointed. That arbitrator will be either a retired judge or an attorney licensed to practice law in the state where the arbitration is conducted with experience in the law underlying the dispute. The parties select that arbitrator from that provider's roster of arbitrators. If the parties cannot agree on an arbitrator after a good faith meet and confer effort, the provider appoints the arbitrator under its own rules.

California Code of Civil Procedure section 1281.6 states:

If the arbitration agreement provides a method of appointing an arbitrator, that method shall be followed.

In the absence of an agreed method, or if the agreed method fails or for any reason cannot be followed, the court appoints the arbitrator on petition of a party. On a petition to appoint a neutral arbitrator, the court nominates five persons from lists supplied jointly by the parties or obtained from a governmental agency or private disinterested association concerned with arbitration. The parties may jointly select the arbitrator within five days of receipt of notice of the nominees, whether or not the arbitrator is among the nominees. If the parties fail to select within the five-day period, the court appoints from the nominees.

Where the parties have appointed no arbitrator & have provided no other method of appointment, Rule 12 of the ADR Rules has ADR Services send each party an identical list of at least seven names from its panel. If the parties are unable to agree on an arbitrator, each party has fifteen business days from the transmittal date to strike, or remove from consideration, up to three names, number the remaining names in order of preference, & return the list. A party that does not return the list in time is deemed to find every name on it acceptable, & if the parties fail to agree on any of the persons named, ADR Services appoints the arbitrator that was most acceptable to the parties as indicated by their preferences.

Rule 12(D) gives the parties fifteen calendar days after service of the proposed arbitrator's disclosure statement to object to the appointment of the arbitrator based upon the disclosures made. Section 1281.91 provides that a party entitled to receive the disclosure may serve a notice of disqualification within fifteen calendar days after service of the disclosure statement. Under that section, a proposed neutral arbitrator who has complied with the disclosure statute shall be disqualified on the basis of the disclosure statement once that notice is served. The right is waived if the notice is not served in time, unless the proposed nominee or appointee makes a material omission or material misrepresentation in the disclosure.

Section 1281.9 requires the proposed neutral arbitrator to disclose anything that could cause a person aware of the facts to reasonably doubt the arbitrator's impartiality. The disclosure must name the parties to prior or pending noncollective bargaining cases involving a party to the arbitration or a lawyer for a party for which the proposed neutral arbitrator served or is serving as neutral arbitrator. It must also give the result of each case arbitrated to conclusion & the identity of the prevailing party.

Before the proceeding concludes, a party may challenge an arbitrator's continued service on the judicial-type grounds listed in Code of Civil Procedure section 170.1. Rule 12(E) requires the challenge to rest on information that was not available to the parties when the arbitrator was selected, & the challenge will be ruled upon by the Arbitrator, which shall be conclusive. The rule adds:

This provision does not apply to information contained in and/or acquired through the arbitrator's disclosures in the matter.

Fees and confidentiality

Under Rule 43, counsel for each party pay a pro rata, or proportional, share of the arbitrator's fees & expenses, subject to apportionment by the arbitrator, unless the parties' agreement or other applicable law requires a different allocation. Rule 36 requires the case management team, other essential ADR Services staff, & the arbitrator to maintain the confidential nature of the arbitration proceeding and the Award unless law or a judicial decision requires otherwise.

See also

• Forced arbitration
• Uber EULA precludes jury trial
• Valve removes arbitration requirement from Steam Subscriber Agreement