The following is via WCBSTV:
Drivers in New Jersey were left stunned, after state Appeals Court judges found that when a driver is texting and causes an accident, the recipient of the texts can also be held liable for negligence.
As CBS 2’s Hazel Sanchez reported Tuesday night, the decision stemmed from a 2009 accident where a 17-year-old girl texted a friend just before that friend crashed his pickup truck into a Morris County couple on a motorcycle.
The man and woman on the motorcycle, David and Linda Kubert, both lost parts of their legs. They sued not only the truck’s driver, but also the girl who was texting him.
On Tuesday, a state Appeals Court ruled that the girl in that particular case could not be held liable. But it also ruled “that a person sending text messages has a duty not to text someone who is driving if the texter knows, or has special reason to know, the recipient will view the text while driving.”
Judges hope that making a legal responsibility for texting to drivers will make the public more aware of the dangers of texting and driving.
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6 Responses
i think the the headline is incorrect. It should refer to the Texter (the one who sends text) that he/she can be liable if te receiver gets into a crash.
The judge is completely naive, and personally I think her eligibility to be an appeals court judge should be reviewed! It is 100,000,000,000,000% the drivers responsibility to not text while driving. There is no “requirement” to respond to a text. If it is so important then the driver should pull over to respond (or wait until a red light assuming you pay attention to when it turns green and immediately put the phone down). You cant hold the “texter” responsible in any way shape or form!!
The headline says that recipients can be liable for these accidents, but the article says that the sender can be liable if the receiver gets in an accident….
Anyway, proving that the sender knew the recipient was driving, AND that they would look at the text while driving, will be very hard in most cases.
But I’m all for making the recipient liable even if they just looked at a received text.
Upon further review, the article is all over the place. The first two paragraphs do indeed agree with the headline – the recipient can be held liable.
But the last two paragraphs seem to imply the sender can be held liable when the recipient causes an accident, even though she wasn’t in that particular case.
I see all the YWN legal scholars have checked in already so this comment will probably be redundant. For tort cases 4 elements need to be proven:
1 Duty
2Breach of duty
3Damages
4 Causation
Its near impossible to prove these elements in the case of text sender so its highly unlikely this judge’s ruling will ever hold up.
As the court said, they issued their decision to deter people from helping others text and drive (lifnei iver?). It’s not a legal decision, it’s a public policy decision.