Following the Dietikon District Court, the Basel-Landschaft Criminal Court sentenced an Uber driver for violating the taxi law in the beginning of November 2017. He received a conditional fine of 60 daily rates of CHF 70.00 and a fine of CHF 500.00.
The public prosecutor’s office of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft accused the 40-year-old man of making a profit of almost CHF 24,000.00 in nine months by making around 13,000.00 km of customer trips. The court thus took the commercial element as a given. The defendant was also accused of driving without a permit for professional passenger transport and of driving without a permit in accordance with the cantonal taxi law. The car also lacked a tachograph.
The court followed all the charges of the prosecutor and in particular did not accept the defence counsel’s argument that the accused had merely carried out training trips in preparation for the taxi examination and had in fact hardly earned anything. Rather, the judges concluded that he had intended to achieve economic success with the trips.
The verdict is considered to be groundbreaking for all other cantons. The defence has announced that it will bring the matter before the highest court.
You can find the article on Telebasel here.