Can you lose your right to a jury trial in a car accident lawsuit if your child orders a pizza? In March 2022, Georgia and John McGinty of New Jersey were in an Uber car ride heading home from dinner when their driver hit another vehicle. The McGinty’s were left with serious injuries and filed a lawsuit against Uber in 2023.
Uber has an arbitration clause in its user agreements. Arbitration is trial by an arbitrator, a private judge, rather than a jury. The arbitration clause was in their Uber Eats account. McGinty’s daughter had clicked and accepted on McGinty’s Uber account on her parent’s phone to order a pizza in January 2022. The trial court denied Uber’s request to enforce the arbitration clause since the agreement did not clearly explain the difference between arbitration and court. However, the appellate court in September 2024 reversed the decision, holding that the agreement did not have to contain explicit language, and found that McGinty’s daughter had been authorized by her parents to sign the agreement when the daughter received the phone.
Uber has also stated that the McGinty’s had agreed to the terms and conditions, including the use of arbitration, when she initially signed up for the Uber app in 2015 and several times thereafter. Uber has also stated that the Uber driver involved in the collision no longer has access to the app.
The New Jersey Court’s decision is an echo of a similar case in Florida when a woman died of a severe allergic reaction while eating at a Disney World tenant restaurant. Disney initially alleged that the woman’s family had to arbitrate the case because of a free trial subscription for Disney+.
Arbitration is a useful legal tool to settle disputes. Large companies like Apple and Google involved in complex lawsuits against one another may prefer to use an arbitrator who is knowledgeable about their technology over jurors who know nothing about how their tech works. In those kinds of cases, the companies understand what arbitration is and have explicitly agreed to it because each party believes it is beneficial to have a judge who is knowledgeable about a niche area of their case.
Arbitration in consumer product or personal injury suits is far more controversial. The average consumer may not even know what arbitration is, let alone that they are agreeing to it. It is doubtful that McGinty’s daughter – who is still a legal minor – was going to read multiple pages of terms and conditions when she was ordering a pizza. The surprise factor is heightened when the arbitration clause is buried in a product or service agreement that is similar but not actually connected to an incident. A child who wants a pizza cannot anticipate that it will hurt her parents’ ability to recover on a car accident lawsuit anymore than a grieving husband is going to anticipate that a free streaming service will undermine his food allergy lawsuit.
Arbitration is currently enforced against the states through the Federal Arbitration Act. Even if state courts want to preserve their citizens’ right to a jury trial, they cannot because federal law overrides state law. However, as more stories such as the Disney+ and Uber fisacios become more prominent, arbitration will increasingly lose its luster among average Americans who are harmed by their inability to present their case to a jury.
Do I Need the Help of a Personal Injury Attorney?
If you have sustained a personal injury through the unlawful act of another, then you should contact a personal injury attorney. A skilled personal injury lawyer near you can review the facts of your case, go over your rights and options, and represent you at hearings and in court.