Scooter lawsuit in California accuses startups of causing civil unrest

Reuters

• At least nine people injured by e-scooters have filed a
  lawsuit in California against Lime, Bird, Segway and other
  operators. 
• The plaintiffs — some of whom have required surgery after
  their injuries — don’t necessarily want to ban scooters, but want
  the companies held responsible.
• Bird and Lime pushed back against the lawsuit, saying their
  scooters are still safer than cars. 

Add another item to the
growing list of anti-scooter backlash.

A lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles accuses scooter
operators Lime and Bird, along with China’s Xiaomi and Segway, of
causing a public health crisis by launching its scooters in
public places across California.

“While acting under the guise of commendable goals of furthering
personal freedom and mobility and protecting the environment,”
the lawsuit claims, companies are “endangering the health,
safety, and welfare of riders, pedestrians and the general
public.”

One of the nine named victims of the class action suit, Lorenzo
Borgia, ended up with eight damaged teeth and stitches in his lip
after the rider of a Lime scooter crashed into him in July.
Another plaintiff, David Peterson, who performs on the Venice
Boardwalk as ‘Davy Rocks,’ claims he had to get surgery for a
torn bicep tendon after a Bird rider crashed into him in June.

“I don’t hate the scooters or people who ride the scooters,”
Peterson
said in another, more recent Instagram post. “Everyone just
needs to follow the rules and be safe when they ride and the
scooter companies need to be help responsible for the damage that
they cause to people.”

The suit goes on to blame the thousands of scooters that
companies have “dumped” in localities — sometimes without
permission — to get the service up and running.

“In ‘dumping’ thousands of Scooters onto our streets, sidewalks,
and other Public Places within a very short period of time,
without any significant, reasonable or appropriate warning to or
approval by public authorities, the Scooter Defendants, and each
of them, have acted in a grossly negligent manner and
outrageously, maliciously, fraudulently and oppressively and/or
with a conscious disregard for the health, safety and welfare,”
the lawsuit says.

Both Lime and Bird pushed back against the lawsuit,
according to the Washington Post, with both companies
pointing towards their goals of making transportation more safe
and more energy efficient.

“Class action attorneys with a real interest in improving
transportation safety should be focused on reducing the 40,000
deaths caused by cars every year in the U.S.,” a Bird
spokesperson told Business Insider. “Shared e-scooters are
already replacing millions of short car trips and the pollution
that comes with them, and we at Bird will continue to work with
cities to help them redesign their transportation networks so
that they are safer and cleaner.” 

Business Insider has reached out to the other three companies
named in the suit and will update this post if more comments are
received.

Catherine Lerer, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in the
suit,
has also filed a similar lawsuit in Colorado. She
told the Washington Post that she has received “more than 100
calls from people injured by scooters” in recent months. In the
suit, plaintiffs claim the onslaught of scooters has cause “civil
unrest” throughout California.

“Deployment of the scooters throughout the Public Places of
California has caused civil unrest with individuals throwing the
scooters into trashcans, dumpsters, the Venice Canals and the
Pacific Ocean,” the suit reads. “In addition to lighting the
scooters on fire (which, due to their batteries can cause
explosions) and burying them into the sand of California’s
beaches.”