Finland’s Supreme Court has rejected a petition by five Uber drivers to appeal fines imposed on them for illegally plying a taxi.
The district court found that the drivers had been unlawfully operating taxis before new traffic laws liberalised the taxi business in Finland. However sentencing took place in August this year – after the new legislation came into force.
The district court ruled that applying the new law would have resulted in a lighter sentence for the defendants.
The defendants directly petitioned the Supreme Court for leave to appeal the lower court’s decision, in a bid to secure a precedent ruling. They argued that the charges against them should have been dismissed given that operating as an Uber driver was no longer a punishable offence in August.
"We evaluated whether from the perspective of applying the law in other cases or harmonising case law, it is important to bring this case before the Supreme Court for a hearing. And these five cases did not meet the criteria for a precedent ruling, so leave to appeal was not granted," said court rapporteur Heidi Myllys.
The Supreme Court’s decision means that the district court’s fines are now enforceable. The higher court noted that taxi operations at the time of the violations and after the new law came into force both required a permit and that unlicensed activities are punishable.
This means that although the taxi market has been opened up to more players, operators must still apply for a license from the Finnish Transport Safety Agency Trafi before they can begin to serve passengers.
More than 100 Uber cases under appeal
In November the Helsinki Court of Appeal suspended hearing of nearly 30 cases involving Uber drivers while Supreme Court weighed the five drivers’ plea for a hearing.
Now that the Supreme Court has handed down a decision, the appeal court will continue to work through its backlog of appeals as usual, said Helsinki Appeal Court administrative counsel Suvi Niemelä.
Altogether the appeal court has more than 100 Uber-related cases in the pipeline, all of which came to the docket during 2018, while a few dozen were tabled after the legislative reform.