New Jersey Case Finds No Liability for Person Who Texted Driver Before Crash

As reported in the New Jersey Law Journal, a New Jersey trial court judge recently dismissed civil aiding-and-abetting claims against a woman (age 17 at the time) who sent a text message to a driver right before an accident. The judge ruled that under the facts presented, the woman did not owe a duty of care (Kubert v. Best, MRS-L-1975-10).

In the case, a 19-year old man was driving his pickup truck when he lost control and hit a couple on a motorcycle, severely injuring them. Phone records showed that the driver and a woman exchanged three text messages in the minutes before the accident.

The couple alleged that the woman who sent the text message knew or should have known that the recipient of the message was driving, and thus she, as well as the driver, was at fault for the accident.

In his oral opinion from the bench, the judge noted that it was the driver who initiated the text exchange preceding the crash.

According to the article, the woman’s lawyer argued that it would be “unfair and unworkable to impose a duty on texters because they have no control over when, where or how recipients will read and respond to their messages.”
In his opinion, the judge stated that he was unable to find any precedent directly on point, either in New Jersey or other states. The closest case he found was a North Carolina federal court case in which the court dismissed a products liability claim brought by people injured when a tractor-trailer hit a car, allegedly because the driver was distracted by a dispatcher’s text message. The suit faulted the tractor-trailer communications system because it allowed the driver to receive texts while the vehicle was in motion.