The Taipei High Administrative Court ruled in favor of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) in a lawsuit against drivers for the taxi app service Uber, the Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) said yesterday.
The ruling was handed down earlier this month before the Lunar New Year holiday.
The DGH said it began cracking down on illegal taxi services provided by Uber Taiwan as well as the drivers hired by the company in September 2014, adding that both the company and its drivers were fined for breaking the law.
Uber sought to appeal the fines at the ministry’s appeal committee, but the committee upheld the penalties issued by the highway authority. The company subsequently tried to invalidate the fines for itself and its drivers by filing two separate administrative lawsuits last year.
The court in November last year overruled the penalties against the company, saying that some of the tickets given by the DGH to Uber did not indicate the location and time that it had allegedly conducted business illegally.
However, the same court favored the ministry in a case against Uber drivers, saying the drivers had violated the Highway Act (公路法) and Transportation Management Regulations (汽車運輸業管理規則).
DGH Motor Vehicles Division Deputy Chief Liang Kuo-kuo (梁郭國) said the judge in the case against Uber considered the procedures the ministry had adopted as essential in issuing a verdict, whereas the judge presiding over the case against Uber drivers did not share the same legal opinion and ruled that the drivers had infringed government regulations.
Liang said the court’s decision to side with the ministry against Uber drivers showed that the court considered what the drivers did was illegal and issued a clear verdict, which is more likely to set a precedent for ensuing lawsuits.
Uber has notified the Supreme Administrative Court that it plans to appeal the High Administrative Court’s ruling, Liang said.
Liang said that the judge in the case against the company simply overruled the penalties issued to Uber because of flaws in the procedures taken by the DGH, adding that he did not say that the penalties were issued illegally.
Fearing the Supreme Administrative Court might overrule the penalties against the company again, the DGH said that it had re-issued all the tickets to Uber with more detailed expositions about their violations. As such, the company would have to restart its administrative appeal with the ministry’s appeal committee, the DGH said.
The ministry is also seeking to set stricter punishments for Uber drivers. Currently, the ministry can only revoke a driver’s license if they are found to have violated the law five times.
As of Monday, Uber had been fined NT$36.5 million (US$1.09 million) for 268 recorded violations. Drivers recruited by Uber have accumulated fines of more than NT$11.75 million.
Uber and its drivers have paid NT$31.25 million and NT$11.5 million in fines respectively.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas