Judge tosses lawsuit over Uber driver’s killing by passenger

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
Associated Press

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — A federal judge in Baltimore has dismissed a wrongful death lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc. filed by the family of a rideshare driver who was killed by a passenger in 2019. U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake ruled Thursday that Uber didn’t have a duty to conduct background screenings of passengers. The judge also concluded that the harm to Uber driver Beaudouin Tchakounte was not “sufficiently foreseeable” to Uber even if it had known that the passenger who killed him had been convicted of robbery 21 years earlier. The passenger who shot and killed Tchakounte and a second passenger in Prince George’s County, Maryland, later told authorities that he was high on PCP.