Uber's “technical friends” set out to disrupt Australia's taxi app when the company entered the country's car rental market and began operating illegal rideshare services, lawyers claim.
Taxi Apps, the company behind the GoCatch app, is suing Uber in the Supreme Court of Victoria.
The company alleges the ride-hailing giant knowingly and illegally launched UberX in Australia to damage GoCatch, an app that allows passengers to request taxis.
The company also accuses Uber of serious misconduct, including corporate espionage and hacking into competitors' systems.
KC lawyer Michael Hodge on Tuesday revealed internal Uber emails that he said showed the company had tried to delay attempts by New South Wales authorities to stop criminal activity.
When the NSW Road and Maritime Service served a warrant against Uber in its Sydney office for failing to comply with the Passenger Carriage Act since its abolition, staffer Zac de Kievit (now a Melbourne solicitor) told colleagues: “We hit the kill switch,” Hodge said. He said.
The ride-hailing giant has since held on to documents requested by authorities, instead considering ways to prolong the process and citing privacy laws as part of the discussion in cases where it is unclear whether they are relevant. Hodge said he had considered it.
“The inferable inference is a sham to thwart the investigation (pointing to privacy laws),” the lawyer said in court on Tuesday.
Hodge said Uber has also stepped up its political lobbying efforts and sought to increase the number of drivers in response to threats.
Court documents point to several media articles, including one written by Uber Australia boss David Rothheim in support of the company's local operations.
De Kievit effectively boasted that Uber was trying to use its complex corporate structure to circumvent the service's demands, and that executives repeatedly ignored advice from lawyers to produce documents. Hodge said.
The lawyers argued that it was clear that the ride-hailing giant's goal was, at least in part, to “destroy” or “crush” GoCatch, in the words of its “tech associates.”
He pointed to an email from Rohrsheim in May 2013 in which he said launching UberX was his “ultimate goal.”
“But this is the situation with taxis right now. To stop GoCatch from growing, we have to win that market. quantity,” Lorsheim wrote.
“Go-catch is the reason we're launching taxis in Sydney. Those guys are fucked,” an Uber manager wrote in an email.
Court documents detail how Uber hacked GoCatch's data and collected the phone numbers of all its drivers, which Rohrsheim said was “game-changing.” He said that it was something that would encourage him to do something.
Then, on July 31, 2013, he told colleagues: “We have been actively cold calling (without disclosing how we obtained the phone numbers) and have acquired 56 of the (GoCatch) drivers.”
Hodge said in court there was no reason to think Uber stopped abusing GoCatch driver numbers after July 31.
Uber has also developed a spyware tool called “Surf Cam” that “collects” GoCatch data, and Mr. Rohrsheim registered as a fake driver for the company, the lawyers argued.
Lawyers say the company launched luxury driver rental service Uber Black in Sydney in late 2012 and Uber Taxi in Sydney in 2013, with the aim of slowing GoCatch's momentum.
Mr Hodge said the problem was that the company launched UberX, a peer-to-peer ride-hailing service, in New South Wales in April 2014.
Peer-to-peer ridesharing wasn't legalized in New South Wales until December 2015, and has since become legal in other states.
Hodge said Uber had previously refused to acknowledge the “absolutely obvious fact” that its drivers were acting illegally at the time.
However, in the context of the GoCatch case, it was strictly recognized as illegal.
The lawyer acknowledged that GoCatch had management problems.
Uber has not yet made an opening statement in the civil trial before Judge Lisa Nichols, which is expected to last 10 weeks.
