The Glade 4.0

(CNN) -- We've all heard the dictum: Don't text and drive. Now a New Jersey state appeals court has an addendum: Don't knowingly text a driver -- 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.

The two were teens at the time. He was 18; she was 17, and they were dating. 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 big, blue touring motorcycle with his wife, Linda, along for the ride. They approached Best at exactly the wrong time.

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A court summary of the times of texts and calls to and from Best's cell phone reflect what happened next:

The teens were having a text chat, volleying each other messages every few moments.

Seventeen seconds after Best sent a text, he was calling a 911 operator.

His truck had drifted across the double center line and hit the Kuberts head-on.

The scene Best described to the emergency operator was most certainly gruesome.

"The collision severed, or nearly severed David's left leg. It shattered Linda's left leg, leaving her fractured thighbone protruding out of the skin as she lay injured in the road," the court document said.

Best hung up. Colonna texted him two more times.

The court did not publish the contents of their messages.

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The lawsuit

The Kuberts both lost their legs. They sued.

But they didn't just go after Best. They included Colonna in the lawsuit.

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 told CNN affiliate WPIX-TV.

The argument seemed to work.

The ruling

On Tuesday, 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.

"We hold that the sender of a text message can potentially be liable if an accident is caused by texting, but only if the sender knew or had special reason to know that the recipient would view the text while driving and thus be distracted," the court said.

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.

"In this appeal, we must also decide whether plaintiffs have shown sufficient evidence to defeat summary judgment in favor of the remote texter. We conclude they have not," it said.

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The reaction

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.

The judges' decision has elicited a similar response from the state's governor, Chris Christie.

The driver is ultimately responsible, he said. Not someone sending him a text.

"You have the obligation to keep your eyes on the road, your hands on the wheel and pay attention to what you're doing," he told radio station New Jersey 101.5.

Other New Jerseyites agreed.

"That's completely absurd, just because you know you're driving doesn't mean, it really doesn't mean they know you're looking at it," Joe Applegate told WPIX.

"Even talking to the driver can distract them, so they are going to arrest for someone who simply talked to someone who is driving?" Louise McKellip asked.

The future

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's 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.

And new legislation proposed by state Sen. James Holzapfel would let police thumb through cellphones if they have "reasonable grounds" to believe the driver was talking or texting when the wreck occurred.

The bill has set off alarm bells with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.

A frightening decision. I am not responsible for someone else's actions. Is the pretty girl on the corner responsible for accidents? The owner of attention-grabbing billboards? This is absurd. Indeed, I frequently text someone instead of calling BECAUSE I know they are driving. That way, I don't distract them and the info is waiting for them when they arrive. Grocery lists, for example, when my wife's on her way home.

Since she was unaware that Best was texting while driving, she bore no responsibility, the court decided.
"In this appeal, we must also decide whether plaintiffs have shown sufficient evidence to defeat summary judgment in favor of the remote texter. We conclude they have not,"

The judges dcided the sender didn't meet whatever "criteria" the judges wanted to set, so I'm wondering just what that "criteria" is.

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.

I don't see why the decision is frightening. As far as I can tell, she was not found liable in the initial proceedings and was not found liable in the appeals proceedings.

As I said in my OP, I frequently text people because I know they are in the car. It is less distracting than a phone call, and gets the information to them and waiting. What about email? What about other distracting behaviors as I mentioned?

What an idiotic notion. There are so many things wrong with this I'm not even really sure where to start.

Slippery Slope is a logical fallacy.

You don't see the problem with this view? This ruling is resulting from a slippery slope. It's not illegal to send texts if you aren't driving. It's illegal to send and read texts while you are driving, and this has slipped to now potentially allow liability for people not driving. It is a slippery slope. Further, you have to look at the justification for the decision and see how that same justification can be applied elsewhere - because that's what lawyers do. It basically boils down to "if you knowingly distract a driver you are liable". That can be applied broadly.

No. This case was the result of a lawsuit, not a prosecution under law. The defendant was found not to be liable by the appeals judges on the simple basis of being "oblivious". That sets a very high and difficult bar to sue someone, and does not in any way establish that it's illegal to do so. The court only held that someone could be civilly liable for that action, but by finding that a person who was oblivious to whether the person was driving was not liable they set a fairly high bar to cross for a successful suit.

You even admit that. It has to be "knowingly" done. "Knowingly" is much harder to establish that "recklessly" or "negligently". Your silly pink and green house example would never work; it would be impossible to prove that the person painting the house specifically distracted a particular driver at a particular point in time, which would be needed to establish "knowing" action.

Try to at least stick to how the legal system actually works if you're going to complain about laws and rulings.

I did not say that it was illegal. However, liability for sending texts to a driver can only result from some basic negligence. Negligence requires knowledge that it's not ok to text and drive, which goes back to the law against it. Now, in this case, she passed the "requires knowledge" test, in that they could not demonstrate she knew he was driving. Even so, the decision, which establishes the possibility of liability, stems from the law outlawing texting while driving, and is basically a slippery slope decision.

Fair enough on the "silly" example, but surely you get my point - there's a whole lot of things along the side of the road that are CLEARLY INTENDED to attract the attention of the driver.

Read my posts and don't nitpick.

Yes, you did say it was illegal, even if you didn't intend to. You said the law prohibits "texting while driving", then went in your next phrase to say "and this has slipped to now potentially allow liability for people not driving." Liability can mean either criminal liability (guilt) or civil liability, and while civil liability is what is more commonly meant, the fact that you were talking about an illegal action in the previous phrase indicated that you were talking about criminal liability - i.e. that the action was illegal.

Furthermore, negligence requires that an action be a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances, not "knowledge that it's not ok", whatever that means. The decision is not a slippery slope; a person of ordinary care should know that if they text someone, there is a high probability that person will give their attention to the text. We're conditioned to respond to telephones when they alert us from a young age, and that includes texting in recent years.

They are intended to attract the attention of people in general, not drivers, specifically, and the case established that you knowingly have to text (i.e. distract) a driver - that means a specific driver who actually caused an accident, not that you did something intended to attract attention in general and it just so happened that a driver was the one who caught it and then wrecked. That's what "knowing" means, legally - knowing is a culpable mental state and has a specific legal meaning.

This is why slippery slope is a fallacy. If what you said actually were to happen, it would be practically impossible to move about on the roads since any accident could be blamed on practically anything that happened in sight of a road. Telling people not to text someone who is driving, on the other hand, is narrow, highly specific, and doesn't interfere with general use of the roadways and their environs. This is why it would never be extrapolated in that fashion; the people that make the law and apply the law don't want things to end up that way any more than you do.

Don't tell people to read your posts or not nitpick. Make arguments that make sense. You're the one always ***** that if someone doesn't understand you, its on the speaker to clarify what they mean, so quit acting like a self-important douchebag. You're the one nitpicking your own vague posting to claim I "didn't read it."

The fact that I'm referring to a lawsuit indicates that I'm talking about civil liability.

I clarified - don't nitpick.

Except that, everyone knows it's illegal to read texts in the car. For that reason, I assume that people will not break the law if I text them.

I think you're splitting hairs.

Exactly right. Which is why this is a terrible decision. The fact that it is applied in one instance and probably won't be in others makes it ambiguous and unclear.

Don't tell people to read your posts or not nitpick. Make arguments that make sense. You're the one always ***** that if someone doesn't understand you, its on the speaker to clarify what they mean, so quit acting like a self-important douchebag. You're the one nitpicking your own vague posting to claim I "didn't read it."

DE - this entire derail is based on you nitpicking. Yes, I understand "knowingly", I understand how the legal system works (in general).

Whether this is a slippery slope fallacy or not (I don't believe that it is) is irrelevant. It's a terrible decision. You're nitpicking at every aspect of my posts, while ignoring the point - it's a vague decision that opens the door to liability where none should exist.

I'm not interested in debating minutia, and I'm certainly not interested in squabbling with you over who can post what, how, etc.