NJ Court: Sending a Text Message To a Driver Could Make You Liable For Crash

C0R1D4N writes "A New Jersey Appeals Court has ruled that both sides of a texting conversation which resulted in a car accident could be held liable. The ruling came as part of a case in which the driver of a truck received a text message shortly before striking a motorcycle carrying two passengers. The court ruled that while in this case, the person sending the text wasn't liable, they could be if the circumstances were a little different. '...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.'"

Comments

Re:Idiocracy

[Artifakt]

"Driver alledges his dispatcher told him to answer the phone even while driving and he did so, claiming this led to the accident. Company has written records of disciplining some driver employees for not immediately answering phone calls, and ex-employees are available to testify that this was cited by their management in termination. Preliminary investigation showed dispatcher and management did not know the laws of the state where the acccident occurred re. cell phone use. Dispatcher and other management had signed statements on record with their insuror stating they educated their drivers in all applicable state and local laws as part of regular training, and in fact were given a discount on insurance prices for their internal safety program."
            That's not a hypothetical - that's settled case law. That's two independent lines of proof, either of which would probably have resulted in the same court decision by itself. The company in question paid millions for both the settlement and in fines by the time the whole matter was over.