Taxi Group’s New Lawsuit Targets New York’s Uber Policy

A group of taxi companies sued New York claiming the city is wrongfully allowing Uber Technologies Inc. customers to hail rides with an app.

Current law permits only yellow taxis with valid medallions to accept hails, regardless of whether they’re street hails or “e-hails” from a smartphone, the group said Tuesday in a complaint in state court in Manhattan.

The taxi drivers and owners of taxi medallions claim the city’s Uber-friendly policies are causing the value of medallions and the pay of drivers to plummet. The medallions cited in the case have sold for as much as $1.25 million each.

The city “permits Uber cars and other non-medallion cars to be e-hailed, effectively eviscerating the hail exclusivity to which yellow medallion taxis have been entitled under state and local law for decades,” the group said.

The lawsuit is the latest legal headache for San Francisco- based Uber, which has been sued and challenged by governments around the world over allegations of unfair competition, customer safety and allegedly illegal behavior by some drivers.

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