Ride-hailing company Uber has reached a tentative settlement with the family of Sofia Liu, a six-year-old one of its drivers struck and killed on New Year’s Eve in 2013.
According to the documents filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Monday, Liu’s family is asking for the amount and details of the settlement to remain sealed for the sake of Liu’s brother’s privacy, who is still a minor. He was also struck during the accident.
“The tragic death of Sofia has changed me and my family,” Liu’s father wrote in a statement, according to the San Francisco Examiner. “We would like to try to move forward privately now.”
Liu, her brother, and mother were struck by then-Uber driver Syed Muzzafar while crossing a street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Muzzafar was driving around while waiting for a user to request a ride. At the time, Uber said in a blog post that the incident wasn’t its responsibility because Muzzafar wasn’t carrying a passenger at that moment. However, a state law was later proposed and has since gone into effect, that requires services like Uber have liability insurance for their drivers at all times while they’re working, including while waiting for a new passenger.
“The Lius suffered a terrible tragedy–and our hearts go out to them. While we cannot ease their pain, we do hope that this settlement helps the family move forward,” an Uber spokesperson told Coins2Day via email.
The Liu family is represented by Chris Dolan, a San Francisco attorney who’s also representing Kevin Helpern, a man suing Uber’s founders for stealing his business idea, and other plaintiffs suing the company for various reasons.
