Uber Technologies Inc. drivers seeking to be treated asemployees won a ruling that adds tens of thousands of them to thecase and may put hundreds of millions of dollars more at stake.

A judge's decision Wednesday that will likely let the vastmajority of Uber's 160,000 drivers in California join the case asit heads toward trial in June expands the company's liabilityexponentially, legal experts said. A victory for the driversthreatens to upend the ride share company's business model and cutinto its more than $60 billion valuation.

The drivers can now seek expense reimbursement, including asmuch as 57 1/2 cents for every mile driven, in addition to theirclaims for tips that are already part of the case, under the rulingby U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco.

“A lot rides on this case,” Catherine Fisk, a law professor atthe University of California at Irvine, said before the ruling wasissued. “Uber's business model rests on outsourcing to itsemployees the fixed costs of running a huge fleet of cars forhire.” While reimbursing any individual driver for her expenses issmall, “in the aggregate it appears to be a substantial amount ofmoney,” she said.

Uber said it will appeal the ruling immediately.

“Nearly 90 percent of drivers say the main reason they use Uberis because they love being their own boss,” the company said in astatement. “As employees, drivers would lose the personalflexibility they value most — they would have set shifts, earn afixed hourly wage, and be unable to use other ridesharingapps.”

When Chen allowed the drivers in September to press their claimsas a group, seeking tips allegedly denied them as independentcontractors, he limited the size of the class to what Uber said isless than 10 percent of its California drivers.

Chen's reexamination of Uber's 2014 contracts with drivers thatrequired them to resolve disputes through arbitration will likelyadd tens of thousands of drivers who were excluded from the case inhis September ruling. The company has said most of its drivers werehired in the last two years.

“This order will probably increase the size of the plaintiffclass many times over, to include the large majority of Uberdrivers in California,” Charlotte Garden, an associate professor atSeattle University School of Law, said in an e- mail.

Uber was leaning on a court ruling from August in the fast-changing area of arbitration law to urge Chen to keep the classcapped at fewer than 15,000 drivers.

Drivers' Attorney

Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney for the drivers, said Uberwill now have to turn over data about its workforce so she candetermine how many drivers can join the litigation. She said thecase will grow by tens of thousands of drivers.

Chen's ruling is important because Uber has attempted to use anarbitration clause buried in its user agreements “to shield itselffrom this type of lawsuit,” Liss-Riordan said.

Garden said unique issues in the case involving California lawprobably won't come into play in other lawsuits by workers in thesharing economy challenging their status as independentcontractors.

The case is O'Connor v. Uber Technologies Inc., 13- cv-03826,U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (SanFrancisco).

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