Text A Driver In New Jersey, And You Could See Your Day In Court

Don't knowingly text a driver in New Jersey, or you could be held liable if he causes a crash.

Kyle Best was behind the wheel of his pickup in September 2009 driving down a rural highway when Shannon Colonna sent him a text. They sent each other 62 texts that day, according to court documents. In the opposing lane of traffic, David Kubert was cruising along on a motorcycle with his wife, Linda, along for the ride. They approached Best at exactly the wrong time.

The scene Best described to the emergency operator was most certainly gruesome. The Kuberts both lost their legs. They sued. But they didn't just go after Best. They included Colonna in the lawsuit. Best hung up after the crash, yet Colonna texted him two more times. The court did not publish the contents of their messages. In their minds, she was distracting him and was also responsible for their pain and loss. They settled with Best and lost against Colonna, but they appealed that decision.

The plaintiffs' attorney, Stephen Weinstein, argued that the text sender was electronically in the car with the driver receiving the text and should be treated like someone sitting next to him willfully causing a distraction, legal analyst Marc Saperstein said.

The argument seemed to work, and three appeals court judges agreed with it -- in principle. They ruled that if the sender of text messages knows that the recipient is driving and texting at the same time, a court may hold the sender responsible for distraction and hold him or her liable for the accident.

But the judges let Colonna off the hook. She had a habit of sending more than 100 texts a day and was oblivious to whether recipients were driving or not. "I'm a young teenager. That's what we do," she said in her deposition before the original trial. Since she was unaware that Best was texting while driving, she bore no responsibility, the court decided.

During the trial, Colonna, now 21, found it "weird" that the plaintiffs tried to nail down whether she knew Best was texting behind the wheel, the court document said.

New Jersey has been cracking down hard on texting and driving in recent years, implementing new laws and regulations that treat it in a similar manner as drunken driving if it involves an injury accident. The state passed a law last year based on the fate of the Kuberts and others who had been killed or maimed by texting motorists. The "Kulesh, Kubert and Bolish Law" makes distracted driving a crime if the driver causes an accident. Fines for bodily injury run as high as $150,000, and the driver can go to jail for up to 10 years.

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