A University of Portland college student who was sexually assaulted by a Broadway Cab driver filed a $4.75 million lawsuit last week against the taxi company.

The woman, who was 20 years old at the time of the February 2015 assault, claims that Broadway Cab allowed 71-year-old Hossein Tajipour to keep working as a driver even though it knew about at least one other female passenger who had previously reported aggressive advances by Tajipour.

A Broadway Cab manager didn't return requests for comment for this story Friday or Monday. The taxi company has previously said it terminated Tajipour's contract five days after the college student reported the assault.

According to the lawsuit, the woman had left an off-campus party and was trying to get home but was lost on the night of Feb. 15, 2015. It was cold outside, and she didn't have a jacket, shoes or a working cell phone because her battery had died, according to the suit. That's when she saw Tajipour's cab and flagged him down, the suit states.

Instead of driving her directly home, Tajipour first drove her through a deserted North Portland industrial district, pulled over and grabbed her breasts, stuck his hand down her pants and forced her to perform oral sex, according to the suit and evidence presented at a 2016 criminal trial. She testified that Tajipour told her: "This is what it takes to get home."

He was convicted of first-degree sodomy, first-degree sexual abuse and coercion. In May 2016 sentenced to 10 1/3 years in prison.

The lawsuit states that two other female passengers had previously reported to police that Tajipour made unwanted advances toward them:

In 2010, police notified the company that a female passenger reported that Tajipour drove her to her Beaverton apartment and caressed her body. According to a prosecutor's memo, Tajipour followed her to her door and rubbed his fingers through her hair and rubbed his cheek against hers. The passenger told police that Tajipour "made a grab" for her keys, but she was able to hold onto them and get inside her apartment and close the door, the prosecutor wrote.

Although the lawsuit doesn't claim that Broadway Cab was aware of another previous incident, the suit states that in 1997 Tajipour picked up a female passenger who was walking home from a bar and propositioned her for sex. The passenger told police that Tajipour asked her to have a drink with him, wouldn't stop the cab when asked and grabbed her thigh -- prompting her to jump out of Tajipour's moving cab, according to the prosecutor's memo.

In both the 1997 and 2010 cases, the female passengers made reports to police but ultimately decided not to pursue criminal charges against Tajipour.

Tajipour is not listed as a defendant in this case. It's not uncommon, however, for criminal defendants who are serving long prison sentences not to be sued -- because of their vastly diminished earning capacity in prison.

"We are suing Broadway Cab both because of what its employee did and for what Broadway Cab did not do," said Brent Barton, a Newport attorney who is representing the college student. "It failed to protect the public from an employee that it knew or should have known was a sexual predator."

The suit seeks the $4.75 million for the woman's severe emotional trauma.

The suit also reserves the ability to seek additional money in punitive damages -- alleging that the cab company had an "outrageous indifference to a highly unreasonable known risk of harm and a conscious indifference to the welfare of intoxicated female passengers."

Read the lawsuit here.

-- Aimee Green