SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) - Uber and two of its drivers won a change of venue in a lawsuit accusing them of responsibility for the death of a University of San Diego student who vomited in one vehicle and ran away from a second, dying miles away after being hit by two cars on the highway.
Stella Grace Yeh was highly intoxicated in May 2018 when a friend called an Uber to bring her back to the university. Louvensky Geffrard picked her up, but she left his car after vomiting all over the dashboard and ordered a second Uber, driven by Mark Rycz. When Rycz arrived, she ran from the car into some bushes and was last seen half an hour later several miles away on I-805, where she was struck and killed.
The victim’s mother and sister sued Uber, Geffrard and Rycz in San Francisco, claiming Geffrard ordered her out of his car in a dangerous area and Rycz abandoned her after she ran away, instead of calling 9-1-1 because of her highly intoxicated state. The plaintiffs also sued Uber under numerous theories including negligent hiring and violating the “Bane Act,” by forcing Yeh out of the car after she vomited.
Geffrard told police at the time Yeh canceled her ride after throwing up in his car and Rycz said he assumed she ran into the bushes because she was taking a shortcut back to campus.
All three moved to shift the trial from San Francisco to San Diego, because the accident scene and nearly all of the witnesses were 490 miles away in San Diego. The trial court denied the motion, citing changes to civil court procedure during the Covid epidemic that made video testimony common. Rycz appealed, and the First Appellate District Court, Division Five, in a July 28 decision, reversed and ordered the trial moved to San Diego.
The California legislature revised the rules of civil procedure in 2021 to allow video testimony in civil cases, the appeals court noted, but that law is scheduled to expire in July 2023. More importantly, it includes an exception in cases where the judge determines live, in-person testimony would be useful in resolving the case.
“One operating assumption of our system of justice has long been that the opportunity to observe witnesses `upon the stand and the manner in which they gave their testimony . . . in no small degree aid[s] in the determination of the truth and correctness of testimony,’” the appeals court said.
“Plaintiffs make virtually no effort to justify San Francisco County as the more convenient and just venue: they cite no evidence of any witness working or residing in San Francisco County and articulate no reason why the interests of justice would be promoted by retaining the case in San Francisco County,” the court concluded, ordering the proceedings moved to San Diego.