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by droidno9 1534 days ago
Bird indemnifies the City of Los Angeles as part of their agreement to roll out the scooters. Bird then makes their users indemnify Bird in the user agreement.

The key to this whole thing is for a judge or jury to toss out the latter indemnification as unconscionable. If this indemnification clause is found to be unconscionable here, it could potentially open up Bird to significant liability in future cases. Bird is going to fight tooth-and-nail to make sure this is not the outcome, or offer to settle once it has enough information to figure out that the legal winds are not blowing in its favor.
2 comments
prepend 1534 days ago
> The key to this whole thing is for a judge or jury to toss out the latter indemnification as unconscionable.

Yes, a judge could do that. But I am nowhere near a lawyer but this doesn’t seem unconscionable.

Scooters are purely optional and no one is forced to accept terms they don’t like.

If these terms were on public transit then I think that would be a better chance.

But some random company making you agree to hold the harmless seems pretty normal.

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droidno9 1534 days ago
The indemnification clause is quite broad. That's the part that could make it unconscionable.
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djrogers 1534 days ago
Why should Bird be responsible for anything here though? There's no evidence or claim that there was anything wrong with the scooter that caused the accident...
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Brian_K_White 1534 days ago
Because they chose to indemnify the city.

No one made them do that. They did that because they wanted the right to rent the scooters in the city and the city knew that would come with real problems because shit happens. So Byrd says "Don't worry, we will accept responsibility for any problems."

Well they got the green light and are happy enough to collect the rent, but they tell the user "We accept no responsibility"

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droidno9 1534 days ago
Bird isn't technically a party to this case, but it's on the hook for costs and damages via an agreement it has with the City of Los Angeles to indemnify the City. So, ultimately Bird would have to spend money if the indemnification clause it has with the end user is found to be illegal.
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