July 9, 2026 NEW YORK, NY For two decades, New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) operated under a ruthless rule: you are guilty until proven innocent. Thousands of hardworking cabbies, Uber, Lyft, and black car drivers saw their livelihoods stripped away in the blink of an eye, suspended automatically over mere accusations.

But the wheels of justice, though agonizingly slow, have finally delivered a crushing blow to the city.

In what is being hailed as one of the largest due-process victories in United States history, U.S. Second District Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard J. Sullivan has officially approved a staggering $140 million settlement for roughly 19,500 drivers.

The Cost of Presumed Guilt: Who Gets Paid?

This historic class-action lawsuit covers TLC-licensed drivers who were slapped with automatic license suspensions following an arrest between June 28, 2003, and February 18, 2020. In thousands of these cases, the underlying charges were ultimately downgraded or dropped entirely—yet the drivers remained locked out of their livelihoods.

The $140 million fund will be distributed based on the length of a driver's suspension and whether they formally requested a damages hearing:

• Maximum Payouts: Affected drivers can receive up to $36,000 each.

• Named Plaintiffs: The drivers who stood on the front lines of the lawsuit will receive an additional $15,000.

• The Legal Team: The attorneys who weaponized the Constitution against the city will take home a 25% cut, totaling $35 million.

“By any measure, this nearly 20-year lawsuit stands apart,” Judge Sullivan wrote, emphasizing the truly historic nature of the city's massive financial defeat.

How a Fleeing Fare Sparked a 20-Year Revolution

The catalyst for this multi-million-dollar reckoning began with Jonathan Nnebe, a Queens resident who had been driving a taxi since 1992.

Nnebe’s life was turned upside down when two passengers jumped out of his cab to skip out on their fare. When Nnebe attempted to get his money, the passengers filed criminal charges against him. Under the TLC’s draconian policies, Nnebe's license was instantly suspended. No trial. No nuance. No income.

Manhattan lawyer Daniel Ackman took up Nnebe's case in 2006, quickly realizing the abuse was systemic.

“No lawsuit should be old enough to go to college. This one obviously is,” Ackman said. “Because it took so long, the damages increased. The TLC kept doing what we said was illegal.”

For years, the TLC stripped drivers of their licenses based entirely on an arrest rather than a conviction, all while denying them fair post-suspension hearings. Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, remembered the bleak reality of facing the agency during those dark years: “I remember thinking this is such a kangaroo court. There was a feeling of presumed guilt.”

The Long Road to Victory

The city fought tooth and nail to avoid this day, dragging the litigation through the Second Circuit on two separate occasions. Had the case gone to individual damage trials, Judge Sullivan estimated it would have taken 1,600 business days—roughly six years of courtroom battles—to resolve.

Facing total defeat, the city finally blinked. While the TLC amended its unconstitutional suspension policies in 2020 to prevent future dynamic overreach, the financial ghosts of its past have finally come back to haunt the city treasury.

As the claims period processes and the final calculations are made, the thousands of drivers who were pushed into poverty by a broken system are finally waiting for the ultimate validation: their checks.

“You can’t turn back time and make up for the losses that people suffered,” Desai stated. “We hope this will give them a semblance of a better future. We will only breathe a sigh of relief once the checks are in the hands of the drivers.”

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