An elderly Uber driver claims he was pummeled by a yellow-cab driver — and the NYPD buried the case to help Mayor de Blasio battle the app-based car service.
“It’s all political,” insists 76-year-old James O’Callaghan.
He was headed to pick up a fare for Uber in February 2014 when he got stuck in traffic on 39th Street.
“There was huge traffic coming out of the tunnel,” he said. “I was trying to get to Third Avenue to get uptown. It was stopped dead.”
Then the driver of the yellow cab in front of him got out and began screaming that O’Callaghan had hit his cab. The cabby “threw me to the ground, and when I made an effort to get to my feet he punched me several times in the face,” O’Callaghan claims.
Two witnesses called cops, but the cabby got away when the traffic moved, he says.
Four months later, a detective from the 17th Precinct told him the case was resolved, texting that “an arrest was made, end of story.” But the cop never provided details, O’Callaghan said.
The irate Uber driver said he could find no record of an arrest.
“The city, starting from the top, protected the yellow-cab industry against a lawsuit by me. They knew the cab driver had committed a felony by assaulting a senior citizen,” O’Callaghan claims in a lawsuit he filed earlier this month in Manhattan federal court.
‘The city, starting from the top, protected the yellow-cab industry against a lawsuit by me’
- James O’Callaghan
“At the time, I was driving for Uber, and during that period the mayor was working against Uber . . . If this incident came out, the administration and its policies would be in trouble, so there was a concerted effort to conceal such events and I was a victim of this policy.”
The mayor — who took in $550,000 from the yellow-cab industry during his run for citywide office — locked horns with Uber last year. He tried to cap the growth of the company, whose drivers are far less regulated than cabbies.
O’Callaghan, a one-time stock trader who is acting as his own lawyer, insists he’s the victim of politics, even though the battle between de Blasio and Uber didn’t peak until more than a year after his assault.
“He’s the boss,” O’Callaghan said of de Blasio. “What happened, his administration couldn’t take that at the time.”
He’s seeking $20 million in damages, claiming he still suffers from headaches and vision problems.
The NYPD declined to comment. The city will review the allegations, a Law Department spokesman said.