Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Swarthstraver, your host. On today's show,

the Institute for Justice and a startup cab company sue the city of Little Rock, Arkansas,

for creating an unconstitutional monopoly in the local taxi industry. Joining me to discuss the case is an attorney for the Institute for Justice, Alison Daniel.

Allison, thank you for joining me.

Thank you, Eric, for having me on.

So, Allison, usually when we talk about issues of cab companies getting sued, we're talking about companies like Uber and Lyft, but this case really stands out because it's actually a startup cab company that just wanted to compete with the local monopoly

and ran into a lot of problems.

So give us an overview of the case and why your organization decided to sue.

Sure.

Like you said, it's kind of a classic taxi case rather than the modern Uber and Lyft being

challenged by these industry groups.

It's an entrepreneur who simply wanted to break off from the one established company in Little

Rock, Arkansas, and started his own company because he thought he could do it better, and

he wanted more flexibility, and he also wanted to earn more money.

So our client, Ken Lininger, he in April last year bought one car and decided to start his own company,

Ken's cab, and then he actually decided to go ahead and buy two more cars because he found that it would be

fairly profitable to just do that with the leases and how he could hire employees.

So he started this company, Ken's cab, with three cabs, and then he went to the city to

get permits for these cabs, and then he found out that the city has a monopoly on taxi

services in Little Rock.

So there's only one company and it's illegal to start a second one.

And Ken didn't know what to do exactly.

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