Fetch Media turns tables on Uber in $20m legal battle

Any chance Uber would be able to put its troubles behind it in 2018 have been scuppered by Dentsu-owned mobile agency Fetch Media which has started legal action against the firm in a bid to get back millions of dollars in unpaid invoices that Uber has refused to pay after claiming that the ads were fraudulent.
Fetch Media has filed its lawsuit in the same California federal court where Uber had tried to sue Fetch in September, accusing the agency of billing it for non-existent, non-viewable or fraudulent ads, and failing to pass back rebates and commissions.
Uber gave up that lawsuit just before Christmas when the case was assigned to long-time Uber nemesis US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has already overseen a number of other cases against the firm. It said it would instead pursue the claims in a San Francisco state court.
Now Fetch bosses want Rogers to be assigned to their legal action, in which the agency is seeking more than $19.7m (£14.5m) of invoices still owed from last year.
At the time of the original case, Fetch chief executive James Connelly insisted that the legal action was “unsubstantiated, completely without and purposefully inflammatory so as to draw attention away from Uber’s unprofessional behaviour and failure to pay clients”.