CHARLOTTE — A federal jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday found Uber liable for the behavior of a driver who grabbed a passenger's inner thigh and asked if he could "keep her" as she was leaving the front seat of his car. The jury awarded the plaintiff $5,000 in damages.

The trial began on Wednesday and concluded on Monday. The jury heard testimony from the driver, the plaintiff, and friends of the plaintiff who corroborated her story.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that Uber was a common carrier under North Carolina law and thus liable for the driver's action. According to court filings, Breyer said Uber holds itself out to the public as a transportation provider through its advertising and its control over Uber rides and passenger safety, and that North Carolina law does not explicitly exempt Uber and other rideshare providers from common carrier liability, unlike Florida and Texas.

The case is a bellwether test case and is the third sexual assault lawsuit against Uber to go to trial. In February, a federal jury in Arizona ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to a woman who said one of its drivers raped her during a trip using the platform. Last year, a California jury found Uber not liable for the alleged assault of a rider.

A company spokesperson said the jury found that battery had occurred and not sexual assault, and that Uber has strong grounds for appeal because it believes the jury was incorrectly instructed on the question of liability. The spokesperson said the driver denied touching the plaintiff and that the plaintiff never reported the incident to law enforcement, with the company learning of it only when the lawsuit was filed three years later. "The jury's award here should further bring these cases back to reality, as it represents a tiny fraction of previous demands," the spokesperson said.

Ellyn Hurd, one of the plaintiff's lawyers, said Uber, not the plaintiffs, selected the North Carolina case as a test case for the broader group of pending lawsuits, and that the jury only had to decide whether the attack occurred. Hurd said the absence of a law enforcement report does not mean the incident did not occur. "This was a case that they thought going in that they were going to win," Hurd said. "They picked all the criteria - this is the case that they picked, that they wanted to try. And the jury believed the plaintiff and they lost."

Breyer is scheduled to hear two more sexual assault test case trials against Uber. The next trial is scheduled for mid-September in San Francisco.