Uber Seeks Arbitration Two Years After Fatal Quogue Collision

It’s been two years this week since a head-on car collision on Montauk Highway in Quogue killed five people, including an Uber driver and three of his passengers.

A set of three civil lawsuits associated with the July 24, 2021, nighttime crash are proceeding apace this summer in Suffolk County Supreme Court in Riverhead. Plaintiffs in the suits are due back at the Riverhead courthouse on August 1 to address an arbitration motion submitted by one of the defendants, Uber, that aims to steer the case away from a jury trial.

The accident, which occurred along a stretch of road near where Quogue Street East intersects with Montauk Highway, involved an Uber filled with friends headed east, and an allegedly speeding Nissan Maxima headed west and driven by Justin Mendez, who died in the crash along with four people in the Uber, a Prius.

James Farrell of Manhasset, the father of two young men killed in the crash, sued multiple agencies and individuals following the collision, including Suffolk County; the Quogue Village Police; the estate of Farhan Zahid, the 32-year-old Uber driver; Uber; and the estate of Justin Mendez.

Much of the recent court activity has been focused on Uber’s push for an arbitration settlement over a jury trial. The arbitration policy is spelled out in the company’s online terms and conditions.

“We are opposed to that,” said attorney Bob Sullivan of the Garden City law firm Sullivan Papain Block McGrath Coffinas & Cannavo of the push for arbitration. Sullivan is representing Farrell and said this week, “We want it to be a jury trial — that is the main contention. Uber is trying to enforce an agreement that absolutely nobody ever reads.”

James Patrick Farrell was 25 at the time of his death; his brother, Michael, was 20. Ryan Kiess, 25, also died in the crash, while Brianna Maglio, 24, survived but was seriously injured. The Maglio family is a plaintiff in a separate, second lawsuit against Mendez, Suffolk County and others.

Farrell’s $40 million wrongful death suit charges that Suffolk County has historically failed to properly protect drivers along this curving section of road by, among other charges in the suit, not installing so-called concrete “Jersey barriers” on the highway median to keep vehicles from swerving into oncoming traffic.

The Quogue Village Police Department is also a party to the respective suits, as plaintiffs have charged that the officer who pursued an allegedly speeding Mendez caused the driver to go even faster, thereby causing him to crash into the Prius.

While being pursued by a Quogue patrolman, Mendez allegedly swerved into the oncoming eastbound lane and struck the Prius driven by Zahid. Initial reports suggested Mendez was driving 55 mph in a posted 30 mph zone when he was clocked by the patrol cruiser.

But, according to black box data retrieved from the Nissan after the crash, investigators determined that the vehicle actually was traveling at 106 mph just a few seconds before the collision. Mendez was reportedly driving 86 mph when his vehicle struck the Prius, according to the black box findings.

Investigators in October 2021 reported that the black box recording of the Prius showed that it was traveling on Montauk Highway at between 27 and 38 mph about four seconds before the crash, and that the Prius was braking when it was struck by the Nissan.

In the third lawsuit associated with the fatal collision, the estate of Farhan Zahid is suing Mendez, Suffolk County and the Quogue Village Police. The estate, which represents his surviving wife and young children, is also a defendant in the two other plaintiffs’ lawsuits.

Citing the ongoing litigation, the Quogue Village Police Department declined to comment, as did a press spokesperson with Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone’s office.

Following the collision, the county said it would be conducting a traffic study of the area. An inquiry about the status of the traffic study was met with the same blanket restriction on county officials inability to talk about the pending litigation.

Following the collision, the county did install two speed warning signs at the eastern and western approaches to the curvy stretch of road, along with rumble strips to warn drivers that they’re about to leave their lane.

Whether the Suffolk County traffic study is forthcoming or not is a moot issue when it comes to the litigation, said Sullivan, since the study would not be admissible in court. As for the installation of those speed warning signs and other safety-enhancing features, Sullivan said, “the bottom line is, they did after the accident what they should have done before the accident.”

For their part, in court filings and in past public statements about the collision, the Quogue police agency has rejected any suggestion or claim that by pursuing Mendez, the department created the conditions that led to the crash. The agency has highlighted its best-practices vehicular pursuit policies and provided voluminous data points to The Southampton Press that may help put this tragic accident into context, at least when it comes to the volume of speeding drivers who come through the Village of Quogue.

Those 2021 reports highlight that more than 98 percent of drivers passing through the village are either driving at or below 40 mph or they are driving between 41 and 45 mph.

The data indicates that people generally don’t speed excessively on Montauk Highway as it winds through Quogue: 2 percent of drivers in the Quogue breakdown were driving above 45 mph, which includes a small number of statistical outliers where drivers eclipsed 75 mph. At a documented black box speed of 106 mph on the night of the collision, Mendez was essentially operating his vehicle in uncharted territory, even further outside those statistical outliers.

As for Uber’s dogged and so-far-unsuccessful efforts to compel arbitration over a jury trial, Sullivan said it’s no surprise: Uber is simply looking out for its bottom line in the event his client prevails in the suit, and this is standard operating procedure when the ride-share service finds itself in court. “The award, in my opinion,” said Sullivan, “would be higher in front of a jury trial than it would be in arbitration.”

In seeking arbitration, Uber is not admitting to complicity in the collision — only seeking the minimum exposure in the event of an unfavorable outcome in court. Uber spokeswoman Gabriela Condarco-Quesada said in an email that “we cannot comment on pending litigation.”