Uber's £340m cab claims were thrown out on timing, never tested on the truth
The claims were worth about £340m, brought by thousands of London black cab drivers and two former private hire firms. What they alleged was specific: that Uber gave Transport for London misleading information when it first obtained a licence to operate in the capital in 2012.
The lawsuits were filed in 2024. Uber argued that they fell outside the six-year limit for bringing such claims, and a High Court judge agreed the cases had been brought too late. The judge dismissed them without considering whether the allegations were true.
That is the shape of the result: a clock ran out before the substance was ever weighed. Uber gets the litigation gone; the allegation gets neither a hearing nor a finding against it. Nothing about the 2012 licence application has been settled — only the question of when it could be litigated.
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A six-year limitation is a rule about when you are allowed to ask, not about what happened. The claimants filed in 2024, and the asking window for a 2012 licence application had already shut. Somebody can be entirely right and still be told the courthouse door closed without them.
Untested cuts both ways, though. There is no finding for the drivers and no exoneration for Uber — just about £340m of claims ended by a calendar. If a judge declines to consider whether the allegations were true, both sides are left holding the same unproven story, which is a strange thing to call a win.