Ride-share companies Uber and Lyft prevailed in a court case here earlier this month when Spokane County Superior Court Judge John Cooney granted a preliminary injunction blocking the city from releasing information to the Journal of Business about each company’s ridership activity here.

Cooney also set a trial date on the matter for October. 

Spokane-based Stamper Rubens PS, representing Lyft, and Seattle-based Kipling Law Group PLLC, representing Uber, consolidated a case in which the companies’ attorneys asked the court to bar the city from revealing information about their clients’ ridership.

The Journal of Business had requested information from the city of Spokane regarding the number of rides Uber and Lyft drivers provided, and the amount of money the city received in fees from the companies during the last quarter of 2014. 

Lyft and Uber provide smart phone apps to arrange transactions to transport passengers to their destinations. Riders who want to use the app download it to a mobile device, and sign up for the service. They open the app when they need a ride and typically can select from a number of available drivers who are near their location. The drivers are paid via a credit card; no cash transactions are allowed.

The companies operate in Spokane under a temporary operating agreement the city approved last fall. A contract with the city requires Uber and Lyft to track the number of rides their drivers here provide and to pay the city 10 cents per ride every quarter. 

The Journal of Business made a public records request for the records in February under the state’s Public Records Act. The companies obtained a restraining order against the city, barring it from releasing specific information for each company until the matter could be decided in court. The city did provide the total number of rides and the total amount paid to the city by the two companies, but didn’t break those numbers out for each company. 

The Spokesman-Review newspaper, which like the Journal is operated by the Cowles Co., of Spokane, filed a similar request of the city after the Journal’s request, and had a reporter at the court hearing in mid-March.

Lyft and Uber argue that the information the newspapers is seeking from the city is proprietary, involving what amounts to trade secrets, and that its release would damage their business investments here.

Judge Cooney found that the “Transportation Network Company Ride Report for the fourth quarter of 2014 and the information contained therein on the number of rides (Uber) facilitated through its application and the amount it paid to the (city) for those rides is proprietary information exempt from public disclosure.”  

The court also found that the release of that proprietary information to the public was “not in the public interest and the (companies) would be substantially and irreparably harmed by such disclosure.”

Uber attorneys asked the judge to also bar public release of any future reports, although Cooney declined to make that finding. 

Uber and Lyft, two of the most the nation’s largest ride-booking service companies, have stirred controversy across the country because they enable contracted drivers to use their personal cars to provide taxi-like service to customers with the mobile phone app. Taxi operators complain that the companies aren’t required to follow the same rules that regulate their industry.