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Bird Sues Beverly Hills Over Ban on Electric Scooters, Impounds

Bird Sues Beverly Hills Over Ban on Electric Scooters, Impounds

(Bloomberg) -- Bird Rides Inc., which runs an electric-scooter-sharing service, sued Beverly Hills, California, to invalidate a municipal ban that led to impounds of thousands of the company’s motorized vehicles.

"The Beverly Hills ban on e-scooters has robbed local residents and workers who need to travel into the city of an affordable and environmentally friendly transit choice they are entitled to under California law," David Estrada, Bird’s chief legal officer and head of government partnerships, said in a statement.

In a complaint filed Thursday in state court in Los Angeles, Bird alleges that the city council took the "draconian" step to prohibit shared scooters at an evening session in July without public participation. Beverly Hills police immediately starting impounding scooters, according to Bird.

The city hadn’t seen the complaint yet and couldn’t comment, spokesman Keith Sterling said.

In a July statement, the city council said it banned scooters for six months over "concern for public safety and a lack of any advanced planning and outreach by the motorized scooter companies."

The case is Bird Rides Inc. v. City of Beverly Hills, 18STCP02762, California Superior Court (Los Angeles).

To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Steve Stroth, David Glovin

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