City Targets Cab Companies Who Hire Dangerous Drivers

By Chris Bentley in News on Feb 20, 2012 8:40PM

Chicago taxi companies have evaded punishment for hiring dangerous drivers, a Tribune investigation found, despite longstanding laws that impose fines on cab companies who hire repeat offenders.

In one case, cab driver Rida Lemghari’s 46 citations over five years—he was found liable in 33 cases—were apparently not enough to dissuade cab companies from handing him the keys.

The loophole involves the city’s definition of “person.” City code requires regulators to fine or revoke the license of any “person” who violates a 2000 ordinance targeting companies who rehire offending cabbies. Companies like those owned by Symon Garber lease their cabs to drivers through several subsidiary entities, which limits the overarching licensee’s liability.

Garber is associated with 150—yes, 150—companies and is no stranger to city penalties. In 2010 a sting squeezed $1 million from Garber and his associates for flipping wrecked cop cars as cabs. His maroon cabs drive under names including Chicago Carriage Cab and Royal 3 CCC Chicago.

Lemghari racked up 14 of his citations in Garber cabs, including an incident in which he allegedly try to ram another driver off Lake Shore Drive. The city revoked his cab license last year, but Garber got a free ride:

Violation after violation followed — the worst being a three-month stretch in 2010, when Lemghari was found liable for committing five separate sets of violations prosecuted through the city's Administrative Hearings department, including once speeding 75 mph in a 35 mph zone. All five occurred in the same cab, taxi No. 4158, owned then and now by Garber.

Despite the five-strikes provision, the city did not seek to revoke the medallion for that cab.

Not to worry, say Emanuel administration officials—a new ordinance set to take effect in July will clean things up. The city will post online a list of cabbies with at least two infractions in the past two years. But after taxi industry lobbying, the city removed language requiring officials to enforce penalties for companies that hire repeat offenders.

One hopes a serial offender like Lemghari would stand out on such a list. But without an enforcement provision, the industry-backed ordinance recalls the under-enforced laws that have been on Chicago’s books for more than a decade.