Comments on: N.J. Court: Text Recipients Can Be Held Liable In Texting-And-Driving Accidents

By: Rebbe Yid

Rebbe Yid — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 21:48:38 +0000

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.

By: jew yorker

jew yorker — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 16:26:44 +0000

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.

By: bem684

bem684 — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 14:13:46 +0000

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.

By: bem684

bem684 — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:59:25 +0000

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.

By: dkbmd

dkbmd — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:43:38 +0000

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!!

By: Comment

Comment — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:36:08 +0000

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.