Uber – Double Aspect

L’Uber et l’argent d’Uber

Une poursuite contre Uber carbure à l’ignorance économique

Certaines personnes qui ont eu recours aux service d’Uber la nuit du Nouvel an ont payé cher. Très cher même, dans certains cas. Car, contrairement aux taxis traditionnels dont les prix sont toujours les mêmes, Uber pratique ce que l’entreprise appelle le « prix dynamique » ― un prix qui fluctue, parfois très rapidement, en fonction de la demande pour ses voitures qui existe à un endroit et à un moment donné. Puisque la demande était très forte et très concentrée à la fin des festivités du réveillon, les prix ordinaires ont été multipliés par un facteur parfois très élevé ― facteur dont un client qui commandait une course était avisé, et qu’il devait même entrer, manuellement, dans l’application afin de pouvoir passer sa commande.

Or, on apprenait vendredi qu’une des clientes d’Uber, Catherine Papillon, qui a payé 8,9 fois le prix ordinaire pour sa course, veut intenter un recours collectif contre l’entreprise, à moins que celle-ci ne la rembourse. Représentée par Juripop, elle prétend avoir été lésée par le prix « anormalement élevé[…] » qu’elle a payé. Quant au consentement qu’elle a donné en commandant sa course, elle soutient que celui-ci ne peut lui être opposé vu la lésion qu’elle a subie. Elle affirme, du reste, ne pas avoir compris ce que le « 8,9 » qu’elle a entré en passant sa commande voulait dire.

Patrick Lagacé explique bien, dans une chronique parue dans La Presse, pour les personnes dans la situation de Mme Papillon ne méritent pas notre sympathie:

La nuit du Nouvel An, vous le savez sans doute, est la pire nuit où tenter de trouver un taxi. J’ai personnellement frôlé l’amputation du gros orteil droit, un 1er janvier de la fin du XXe siècle, en tentant de trouver un taxi au centre-ville de Montréal pour me ramener à bon port, au petit matin. Des centaines, peut-être des milliers d’autres cabochons dans la même situation que moi cherchaient eux aussi des taxis, introuvables…

Un détail révélateur du récit de Mme Papillon suggère qu’elle aussi se retrouvait dans une situation similaire : elle « a expliqué qu’elle s’est inscrite sur Uber “en cinq minutes”, peu avant de faire appel à la compagnie dans la nuit du 31 décembre au 1er janvier ». On ne sait pas encore pourquoi elle l’a fait, mais on peut deviner, n’est-ce pas? (Et les avocats d’Uber ne manqueront pas, j’en suis sûr, de lui poser la question pour confirmer la réponse dont on se doute.) Alors, écrit M. Lagacé, quand les gens acceptent de payer un prix, fût-il exorbitant, qui leur est clairement annoncé, pour s’épargner la recherche futile d’un taxi qui n’arrive jamais, eh bien, c’est un choix qu’ils font et dont ils devraient assumer la responsabilité.

Le droit voit-il les choses d’une manière différente? Je ne suis pas civiliste, encore moins spécialiste du droit de la consommation. Je ne prétendrai donc pas émettre de pronostic sur l’issue de la cause de Mme Papillon. Je crois, cependant, pouvoir émettre une opinion sur ce que le résultat de ce recours devrait être si les juges qui en disposeront s’en tiennent aux principes élémentaires qu’il met en cause.

Ces principes sont non seulement, et peut-être même pas tant, moraux qu’économiques. Les biens et les services n’ont pas de valeur intrinsèque qui pourrait servir à déterminer leur prix « juste ». Leur prix sur un marché libre dépend de l’offre et de la demande. Il s’agit, en fait, d’un signal. Si un service ― par exemple une course en taxi ― commande un prix élevé, les vendeurs ― par exemple, les chauffeurs ― savent qu’ils feront beaucoup d’argent en offrant le service en question. Plusieurs vendeurs s’amènent donc sur le marché ― par exemple, dans les rues du Vieux-Montréal ― pour offrir leurs services aux acheteurs. En même temps, le prix élevé signale aux acheteurs que s’ils le veulent acquérir le service, il leur en coûtera cher. Ceux qui tiennent à l’obtenir le feront, alors que d’autres trouveront des alternatives ou attendront. C’est ainsi que le nombre de vendeurs et d’acheteurs s’équilibre, et que ceux qui sont prêts à payer sont servis rapidement. Uber prétend que ceux qui ont voulu utiliser son service le matin du Jour de l’An n’ont attendu qu’un peu plus de quatre minutes, en moyenne, grâce au nombre record de chauffeurs qui étaient sur la route. Personne parmi eux, on peut parier, n’a « frôlé l’amputation du gros orteil droit », comme M. Lagacé jadis.

Son histoire est, par ailleurs, un bon rappel de ce qui arrive si les prix ne peuvent pas augmenter en réponse à une forte demande ― par exemple parce qu’ils sont fixés par décret gouvernemental, comme le sont les prix du taxi traditionnel. Puisque les prix n’augmentent pas, les vendeurs n’ont aucune raison supplémentaire d’entrer sur le marché, et il n’y en a pas plus que d’habitude. Si, en plus, le nombre de vendeurs est limité ― par exemple, parce que le gouvernement fixe un nombre maximal de licenses de taxi ― il ne peut pas augmenter pour répondre à une demande exceptionnelle par définition. Dès lors, c’est l’attente et la chance, plutôt que la volonté de payer qui déterminent qui recevra et qui ne recevra pas le service ― et les engelures s’ensuivent.

J’en arrive aux questions juridiques qui se poseront dans la poursuite contre Uber. Mme Papillon et ses avocats prétendront sans doute que le contrat qui fait en sorte qu’une course de taxi qui coûte 80$ au lieu d’une dizaine « désavantage le consommateur […] d’une manière excessive et déraisonnable », ce qui, en vertu de l’article 1437 du Code civil du Québec, donne ouverture à la réduction de l’obligation qui découle de ce contrat ― en l’occurrence, du prix payé par Mme Papillon. Ils soutiendront aussi qu’il s’agit d’un cas où « la disproportion entre les prestations respectives des parties est tellement considérable qu’elle équivaut à de l’exploitation du consommateur, ou que l’obligation du consommateur est excessive, abusive ou exorbitante », ce qui permet également au consommateur de demander la réduction de ses obligations, en vertu cette fois de l’article 8 de la Loi sur la protection du consommateur. Ils auront tort.

Car penser que la prestation d’Uber se limite au déplacement de son client, c’est ignorer les principes économiques fondamentaux que je viens d’exposer. Uber ne fait pas que déplacer son passager d’un point de départ à un point d’arrivée. Avant même de pouvoir le faire, Uber s’assure d’abord qu’il y aura une voiture pour cueillir le client ― et qu’elle sera là en un temps utile ou, du moins, assez court pour que le client ne se gèle pas les extrémités. C’est ça aussi, la prestation d’Uber, et la raison pour laquelle les gens font appel à ses services même lorsque ceux-ci sont plus chers que le taxi traditionnel. Et c’est pour s’assurer de livrer cette prestation qu’Uber doit faire augmenter ses prix lorsque la demande pour ses services est particulièrement forte. Le recours de Mme Papillon, qui fait abstraction de cette réalité, est, dès lors, fondé sur l’ignorance des règles économiques de base ou sur l’aveuglement volontaire face à celles-ci. Si les juges qui se prononcent sur ce recours comprennent ces règles, ils le rejetteront du revers de la main.

S’ils souhaitent raisonner a contrario, les juges pourront, par ailleurs, se demander quelle serait la réparation qu’ils devraient accorder s’ils faisaient droit à la demande de Mme Papillon. Il s’agirait, de toute évidence, d’une réduction du prix payé ― mais une réduction jusqu’à quel point? Si un commerçant réussit à flouer un consommateur en lui faisant payer un prix exorbitant, mais qu’il remplit, par ailleurs, ses obligations en vertu du contrat, il semble juste de réduire le prix jusqu’à celui qui prévaut sur le marché. Or, y a-t-il un tel prix dans les circonstances qui nous intéressent? Le prix du taxi traditionnel n’a rien à voir avec celui du marché, non seulement parce qu’il est le produit d’un fiat gouvernemental, mais aussi parce que, de toute évidence, ce n’est un prix d’équilibre, c’est-à-dire un prix auquel l’offre et la demande se rejoignent. Au prix du taxi traditionnel, la demande est de loin supérieure à l’offre ― d’où l’orteil gelé de M. Lagacé. Comment un tribunal s’y prendrait-il pour déterminer le prix du marché en l’absence, justement, d’un marché ― autre que celui qu’Uber a créé? Il ne pourrait le faire que d’une façon parfaitement arbitraire, ce qui serait contraire à notre compréhension habituelle du rôle des tribunaux. (J’avais déjà soulevé un problème similaire en parlant d’un recours contre la SAQ, fondé, lui aussi, sur l’article 8 de la Loi sur la protection du consommateur.) Comment est-ce qu’un tribunal saurait, en fait, que le prix exigé par Uber n’est pas le prix du marché? C’est à Mme Papillon, en tant que demanderesse, de le prouver, me semble-t-il. Je ne vois pas comment elle pourrait le faire.

Un mot, en conclusion, sur la position de Juripop dans cette histoire. Cet organisme n’est pas un bureau d’avocats ordinaire qui défend la cause de ses clients, fût-elle guidée par la plus pure cupidité. C’est soi-disant une « clinique juridique », une « entreprise d’économie sociale », dont la mission consiste à « soutenir l’accessibilité [sic] des personnes à la justice ». Or, Juripop ne se place pas du côté de la justice en appuyant Mme Papillon. Car la justice ne consiste pas à se déresponsabiliser face aux conséquences annoncées d’actions qu’on a posées, comme elle cherche à le faire. Et la justice ne peut pas se réaliser dans l’ignorance des lois économiques. Comme le disait fort sagement Friedrich Hayek dans La route de la servitude, « [i]l peut sembler noble de dire, “au diable la science économique, bâtissons plutôt un monde décent” ― mais c’est en fait simplement irresponsable » (je traduis). Les québécois le savent, d’ailleurs: ce n’est pas réclamer justice que de vouloir le beurre et l’argent du beurre.

Uber and Civil Disobedience

I have a new post over at the National Magazine’s Blog, arguing that to the extent that Uber and other firms of the sharing economy breach the laws that prevent them from offering their services to the public, we should assess their claims that such laws are unjust on their merits, instead of rejecting them out of hand as either lawless or self-serving. Uber is engaged in a form of civil disobedience, acting on a principled position that the restrictions on taxi services that municipal authorities in various countries, including here in Canada, invoke to stop its operations cannot be justified in a free society. The fact that it stands to benefit financially if these restrictions are lifted is simply irrelevant to the justice of its claims. Civil disobedience, as a rejection of the authority of the law, is of course disquieting ― perhaps especially to lawyers ― but not always unhealthy. For, as Henry David Thoreau long ago observed, “[l]aw never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.” Anyway, there’s quit a bit there, so I’d encourage you to read the whole thing.

There was a story that has, at first glance anyway, nothing to do with Uber that would have liked to speak about, but couldn’t think of a way to work into the post: that of a family from Cornwall, in Ontario, also engaged in civil disobedience against a municipal by-law being applied to stop its children selling worms to neighbourhood fishers. They haven’t, in case you’re wondering, torn down their house to build a worm factory. The kids are digging the worms out of the ground in their own backyard, and selling them from their own front lawn. No matter. The city is fining them 250$ a day. The parents say they will keep paying the fines ― much like Uber does for its drivers, Frank Roncarelli did for Jehovah’s witnesses, and Thoreau’s aunt did for Thoreau.

Regulations preventing people ― from the children of Eastern Ontario to the zillionaires of Silicon Valley ― from putting their work and enterprise at the service of their fellows, near or far are innumerable. They are passed, sometimes out of sheer foolishness, sometimes out of nimbyism, sometimes at the behest of those who stand to benefit from limits on competition, without attracting much attention, and remain in force indefinitely, so long as no one raises a stink about them. Indeed, raising a stink is the only way to have some of them repealed. We should not condemn the hardy few who are willing to do so as lawless or self-interested. We should be grateful to them instead.

Law and Innovation, Again

In my July post for the National Magazine’s blog I wrote that the decision of Ontario’s Superior Court rejecting the attempt by the city of Toronto to stop Uber operating there without a “taxicab broker” license was a reminder of the fact that technological innovation often challenges the law not directly, but by enabling innovative business models. In a recent post for the Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas, Richard Epstein offers a similar argument, and draws similar conclusions from it.

Prof. Epstein’s post, as it happens, was also prompted by litigation against Uber ― this time in California, where an administrative tribunal recently concluded that its drivers were “employees” and thus entitled to certain benefits. (It is worth noting that New York City’s authorities have since taken the contrary position.) Prof. Epstein points out that

There is no question that [“sharing economy”] platform systems require a contractual framework for a three-party relationship that is not found in the playbook of traditional industries, where there is a direct relationship between the party that supplies the goods and services and the party that requests them.

The law, says prof. Epstein, has a choice in how to respond to the situation. It can let the market work out new forms of contractual relations, which might combine elements of pre-existing standard arrangements (such as the employment contract) if the parties want it. Alternatively, it can try to simply fit new commercial relationships into the pre-existing forms.

For prof. Epstein, the choice is clear:

it is a hopeless task to apply traditional regulatory structures to modern arrangements, especially when they block the implementation of new business models. Indeed, it is necessary to go one step further: it makes no sense to apply these regulatory statutes to older businesses, too. Time after time, these statutes are drafted with some “typical” arrangement in mind, only for the drafters to discover that they must also try to apply the statutes to nonstandard transactions that do not fit within the mold.

No disagreement from me. Here’s what I had written last month:

[t]he law ― including the regulation of taxis ― is written with specific business models in mind. When the business models in question are no longer the only ones around, the legal rules based on the assumption that they are lose their efficacy.

We should, I said, resist “[t]he temptation to expand the scope of the existing regulations, to close the ‘loopholes’ opened up by innovation,” and take “the disruptions caused by innovation … as an opportunity to ask whether any of the arguments for the old rules … still apply.”

But if you didn’t want to take it from me then, you should take it from Prof. Epstein now.

The Uber Decision

Last week, Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice delivered a much noticed judgment rejecting Toronto’s claims that Uber could not operate there without registering and obtaining a license as a taxicab or limousine broker. Needless to say, the ruling is of great practical importance to Uber’s users, both passengers and drivers, as well as those who seek to regulate it out of existence. Legally, the decision, City of Toronto v Uber Canada Inc., 2015 ONSC 3572, is about a very narrow issue of statutory interpretation. Yet the recently-appointed Justice Dunphy’s thorough and well-written opinion provides us an opportunity to reflect on the importance of the Rule of Law and the processes of legal change.

The City of Toronto, like many others in Canada and elsewhere, has chosen to cartelize the transportation of persons by privately owned cars. All the cars used for that purpose are divided into the categories of “taxicabs” and “limousines.” The number of the former is fixed; the number of the latter is restricted indirectly, by imposing a variety of regulations on their owners and operators. In addition, the City requires “taxicab brokers” and “limousine service companies” to obtain licenses in order to operate within its limits. The City’s case against Uber was that Uber was acting as a “taxicab broker” or a “limousine service company,” without having done so. It asked the Court for both a declaration and an injunction that would have ordered Uber to stop its operations in Toronto. Uber, for its part, claimed that its operations were not covered by the City’s by-laws.

Justice Dunphy begins by determining whether Uber cars might be “taxicabs” or “limousines” within the meaning of the applicable by-law, chapter 545 of the City of Toronto Municipal Code. The definition if a “taxicab” is limited to categories defined by the various types of permits issued by the City. Since Uber cars lack such permits, they do not fall within this definition, reasons Justice Dunphy, and must be “limousines,” which include all cars “used for hire for the conveyance of passengers in the City of Toronto” other than “taxicabs.” To say that unlicensed cars used for that purpose are still “taxicabs” “would make nonsense of the definition of ‘limousine’ in the same enactment” [57] and thus cannot be the correct interpretation.

Having concluded that Uber cars are “limousines,” Justice Dunphy asks himself whether Uber ― or, more precisely, any one of the three members of the Uber group of companies actually sued by the City ― acted as a “limousine service company.” The by-law defines such a company as a “person or entity which accepts calls in any manner for booking, arranging or providing limousine transportation.” Uber, Justice Dunphy holds, does not “accept calls,” and thus is not covered by the definition. In Justice Dunphy’s view “accepting” a call or any sort of request “requires the intervention of some element of human discretion or judgment in the process and cannot be applied to a merely passive, mechanical role of receiving and relaying electronic messages.” [78] Yet that is precisely what Uber does.

Having provided prospective passengers and drivers with software that allows them to connect, often well in advance of any specific trip being envisioned by either party, it relays passengers’ requests for a ride to the nearest car available. Unlike a traditional taxi broker or limousine company, it cannot reject the request (for example if there are no cars available) or undertake to fulfill it. It is the driver who receives the request who takes the decision. Uber no more “accepts” requests for rides than does a phone company whose networks are used to transmit traditional calls for cabs, or automated services that connect a prospective rider with a broker. In Justice Dunphy’s view, it “is very likely” that “the by-law was drafted and the word ‘accepts’ was selected in lieu of the more generic ‘receives'” precisely in order “to exclude such businesses from the scope of the regulation.” [70]

Justice Dunphy also considers the meaning of the word “calls,” used in the definition of a “limousine service company” ― but not in that of a “taxicab broker” which, unlike the limousine company, can accept “requests.” This difference in wording, Justice Dunphy says, it must be given effect, so that “calls” cannot be taken to mean “requests.” Besides, the word “requests” is a recent innovation in the definition of a “taxicab broker,” and the City could have amended the definition of “limousine service company,” but has not done so. Online requests handled by Uber are not “calls” in any normal sense of the word, and this is an additional reason for concluding that it is not a “limousine service company.”

Although it might seem like excessive legalistic pedantry to some, I find Justice Dunphy’s analysis persuasive. Needless to say, it only applies to the specific legislative framework before him. Had the relevant definitions been drafted differently, his conclusions would presumably have been different too. But given the by-laws that were actually before him, I think that Justice Dunphy was quite right to distinguish the passive or mechanical functions of receiving or transmitting a communication and the (at least somewhat) discretionary function of accepting an order, as well as to give effect to the distinction between “calls” and “requests” which the City itself has created.

As I said in the beginning, beyond the narrow point about the meaning of the specific words used by Toronto’s city council to regulate its taxi industry, there is a broader one about the Rule of Law. As Justice Dunphy points out, “[t]he goal of statutory interpretation is not to start with the desired outcome that the regulator seeks in light of new developments to see what means can be found to stretch the words used to accomplish the goal,” [69] which as he says is what he would have had to do in order to rule for the City in this case. The Rule of Law requires, among other things, that legal rules be public and relatively stable. It also requires the government to be bound by the existing legal rules. A legal system where the meaning of the rules can change because the government wants it to, even though it cannot be bothered to follow the procedures available for legal change, is not one where the Rule of Law prevails.

It is often said that insisting on this “formal” sort of Rule of Law is not enough, because requirements as to the publicity and clarity of legislation and insistence on legal change following recognized procedures does not do much to constrain government. Government can still enact whatever rules it wants, so long as it goes about it the right way. But if it really were so easy for government to change the rules while following the applicable procedures, would it really be fighting so hard to avoid having to do so? As Justice Dunphy recognizes,

[t]he City finds itself caught between the Scylla of the existing regulatory system, with its numerous vested interests characterized by controlled supply and price, and the Charybdis of thousands of consumer/voters who do not wish to see the competition genie forced back into the bottle now that they have acquired a taste for it. [9]

Changing the rules, in this context, is not as easy as those who denigrate the formal understandings of the Rule of Law would have us believe. And so it matters a great whether

the City’s regulations, crafted in a different era, with different technologies in mind [have] created a flexible regulatory firewall around the taxi industry sufficient to resist the Uber challenge, or … instead [have] created the equivalent of a regulatory Maginot Line behind which it has retreated, neither confronting nor embracing the challenges of the new world of internet-enabled mobile communications. [12]

Justice Dunphy’s conclusion, of course, is that the City’s regulations have done the latter, and Uber is thus free to pursue its (charm) offensive. In theory, the regulatory troops can still be withdrawn from the useless, antiquated defences and thrown into the battle to stop the invaders. In practice, it may well be too late by the time they can be mobilized.

Justice Dunphy understands this, no doubt. Although he insists, as most judges not named Richard Posner are wont to do, that “[q]uestions of what policy choices the City should make or how the regulatory environment ought to respond to mobile communications technology changes are political ones” [13] and not for him to resolve, his awareness of, and willingness to mention, the conflict between “vested interests” and the “competition genie” suggest that he knows that his decision will influence the choices that will end up being made. Indeed, Justice Dunphy’s attention to the details of Uber’s technology and business model, as well as his awareness of the broader context in which the case before him fits, not to mention his rhetorical flourishes, have something at least vaguely Posnerian about them. The decision he has delivered is not only an Uber decision, meaning a decision about Uber. It’s also an über-decision ― one that is superior to what one usually sees.