Taxi Apps Pty Ltd v Uber Technologies Inc [2025] VSC 514

Matt Sgroi-Smith

The matter of Taxi Apps Pty Ltd v Uber Technologies Inc [2025] VSC 514 is highly verbose, spanning 806 paragraphs in its judgment by Nichols J. In her judgment, Nichols generally explores the role of Uber in modern Australian society and comments on the nature of abrasive business practices.

The Parties

Uber Technologies Inc, known for the now-expansive brand Uber, is the holding company which relevantly represents the Uber corporate group. It was founded in 2009 as Ubercab in the American state of California. It operates, among other things, the famous ride-sharing platform known as ‘Uber’.

Taxi Apps Pty Ltd was a corporate entity, established in Australia under the Corporation Act 2001 (Cth). It operated the Taxi-booking app “GoCatch”, established in 2011, which in the period June 2012-May 2014 purportedly amassed over 265,000 passengers completing approximately 341,000 trips. It was a particularly Australian venture.

The Context

Uber Technologies, through its Australian subsidiary Uber Australia Pty Ltd (ACN 160 299 865), entered the Australian market at various times through 2014 and 2015. At the point at which they entered the marker, ‘ridesharing’, being the practice of non-licensed cars and drivers providing the service of driving, was unregulated by the Australian states and was thus unlawful.

 Providing the service of driving was moderated by state laws, such as the Passenger Transport Act 1990 (NSW) and associated regulations. Taxi’s in particular were heavily regulated, with an extensive Pt 4 of the Transport Act detailing the required licences and processes to be undertaken to stay compliant with those stringent conditions. Ridesharing, as at 2015 when Uber entered the NSW market, was not an element contained in the legislation nor the regulations.

Uber’s global strategy was accepted to be one of “regulatory arbitrage” as acknowledged by the group’s founder, Travis Kalanick. By this, it is meant that there was an indifference to, and active circumvention of, the regulatory schemes in place in the various places of business that Uber sought to operate in.

It appears that this strategy was a calculated business approach, whereby the Uber group of companies acknowledged the risk of sanction but saw the potential gains of building and maintaining early market share as sufficient justification.

Uber has, therefore, been subject to a range of litigations and regulatory scheme determinations across the world. It has, for example, been subject to a fine in the American state of Pennsylvania of $11.4 million USD for operating without permission.

In the Australian context, Uber has been subject to potential proceedings regarding class-action litigants comprising Taxi drivers across Australia because of their operating in Australian jurisdictions without permission. The class action is currently being managed by Maurice Blackburn and is estimated to settle in early 2027. There are over 8700 registered members of the class, and the amount agreed to in 2024 was in excess of $271 million AUD.

In NSW, ridesharing has been regulated since at least 2016 under the enactment of the Point to Point (Taxis and Hire Vehicles) Act 2016 (NSW) and the associated Point to Point (Taxis and Hire Vehicles) Regulation 2017, whereby “booking services” are duly regulated.

The Dispute

Taxi Apps Pty Ltd launched proceedings in the Victorian Supreme Court for the tort of conspiracy by unlawful means in relation to the operation of Uber in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia without the relevant permissions and licences. They alleged that the operation of Uber in an unlawful manner in the period prior to regulatory permission was directed, inter alia, to the purpose of preventing GoCatch building a legitimate customer base from which it would be able to generate a first-mover advantage in the rideshare market with its related app “GoCar”. GoCar was ultimately unsuccessful following launch in Sydney in February 2016.

As per cases such as Maritime Union of Australia v Geraldton Port Authority [1999] FCA 151, Taxi Apps Pty Ltd needed to make out the following for their case to be successful:

• (a) there was a combination or agreement between two more persons engaged in conduct amounting to “unlawful means”;

• (b) a purpose of that combination was to injure the plaintiff;

• (c) the combination or agreement was carried into effect by the commission of the agreed unlawful acts; and

• (d) those unlawful acts cased damage to the plaintiff; that it was the unlawful part of the conspiracy that caused loss to the plaintiff.

The Outcome

As part of the agreed facts, of which this case contained many, Uber admitted that when UberX drivers provided services through the relevant periods, those drivers were typically doing so without the required credentials and Uber was both aware of those and complicit in such breaches.

Nichols J accepted that, at least in NSW, there was the sufficient intention to cause harm to Taxi Apps Pty Ltd.

Nonetheless, the tort of conspiracy by unlawful means was not made out.

Though it was held to be possible that members of a corporate group had the capacity to engage in an agreement under the meaning of (a) above, it was not accepted by Nichols J that there was in fact an agreement because Uber Inc did not engage in consultation with its subsidiaries, instead imposing the decision. As such, no factual ‘conspiracy’ could take place.

As to whether statutory, as opposed to common law, wrongs are unlawful, Nichols J felt bound by the authority of Williams v Hursey (1959) 103 CLR 30, which – inter alia – provides that in the circumstances of a tortious wrong, whether or not actions which constitute a statutory wrong ought to be remedied through means other than that statute is a question of the intention of the legislature. Nichols J failed to find an intention in the legislation which communicated that parliament intended the statutory wrongs to also be capable of being the basis of tortious claims.

Therefore, despite Uber Inc’s admission of wrongdoing under the statutory scheme, and despite the reality of other cases brought against Uber to which they have agreed to settle, the Victorian Supreme Court refused to accept the suggestion that this admission opens the floodgates to all potential legal redress.

What we can learn

The law is not so black and white as the distinction between wrong and right.

Nichols J, at paragraphs [803] to [806], provided a judicially ‘scathing’ critique of Uber’s practices in its setup.  For Nichols J, the conduct of Uber was “wrong and unconscionable in the ways discussed; it was neither honourable nor commercially acceptable. This judgment by a superior Court marks the Court’s disapproval and condemnation of that conduct by the standards of the law and by extension, the community”.

Further, she noted that the conduct amounted to a breach of confidence, another tort which might have been a mechanism to answer the claims of the plaintiff, though it is acknowledged that this was not pleaded before her.

However, guilt under the criminal and regulatory law does not answer the question finally of whether or not a party to proceedings ought to be found legally culpable under separate claims. Uber has, and will, expend a significant amount in settlement of claims against it in Australia and globally. It has certainly been found guilty in the court of legal opinion of some wrongs both domestically and internationally. Nonetheless, it was not guilty of this tort of conspiracy, demonstrating how the legal systems rules and traditions in Australia mean that each case ought to be answered not only on its facts, but in the context of the wrong claimed.