ATLANTA (Legal Newsline) – The mother of a man murdered by an Uber driver might yet get her day in court.
The Georgia Court of Appeals on May 17 overturned a ruling that sent her wrongful death lawsuit to arbitration, finding there remain questions about whether Ryan Thornton ever received the updated terms and conditions that contained the mandatory arbitration clause.
Robert Bivines has been found guilty of the murder of Thornton. Bivines, an Uber Eats driver, claimed self-defense after killing Thornton at Thornton’s condominium.
Bivines said Thornton was mad Bivines didn’t bring the food upstairs to his door and an altercation ensued. Prosecutors said he baited Thornton, then shot him.
Bivines’ mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2019. Bivines is serving life in prison.
Court records show Thornton created his Uber account in May 2016. The company updated its arbitration agreement on Nov. 22, 2016.
The lawsuit says Thornton never received an email notifying him of the new terms, which send disputes to arbitration. A trial court granted Uber’s motion to compel arbitration, but the Court of Appeals has ordered it to rethink that ruling.
“Under Georgia’s objective theory of intent, Thornton cannot have assented to Uber’s terms and conditions if he never had the opportunity to see them,” Judge Verda Colvin wrote.
“Not only has Uber acknowledged that Thornton used a credit card instead of Paypal when registering for the Uber app, its counsel also conceded that the keyboard ‘may have momentarily covered’ the text with the link to the terms and conditions.
“This evidence raises questions of whether the on-screen keyboard concealed the text so that the terms and conditions were either never displayed or displayed for an unreasonably short amount of time such that Thornton would not have seen them. Because these questions of material fact remain, the trial court erred by finding that Thornton assented to the arbitration agreement as a matter of law.”
A list of email addresses sent the updated terms did not contain Thornton’s either, the decision states, leaving Uber unable to prove Thornton ever saw the new terms.