Kyle Best
OMG: A text from then-teen Shannon Colonna (left) distracted driver Kyle Best (right), who swerved and crashed into a motorcycle in Jersey. (
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What the cell!
In a first-of-its-kind decision, a New Jersey appeals court says a person can be held liable for sending a text message to a driver who crashes due to the distraction.
The ruling came after a judge let Shannon Colonna off the hook for texting her friend Kyle Best immediately before he slammed his pickup truck into a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in September 2009.
Biker David Kubert and his wife, Linda, both lost their left legs in the grisly collision after Best veered into their lane while rounding a curve in Mine Hill Township.
“We conclude that 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,” wrote Judge Victor Ashrafi of the Appellate Division of New Jersey Superior Court.
But the majority, 2-to-1 decision and a concurring opinion by Judge Marianne Espinosa, both handed down Tuesday, upheld the dismissal of the Kuberts’ negligence suit against Colonna.
Ashrafi said that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Colonna, then 17, knew that Best was behind the wheel when she texted him or that “he would violate the law and immediately view and respond to her text.”
Ashrafi noted that Colonna admitted during a deposition that she sends out more than 100 texts a day, saying, “I’m a young teenager. That’s what we do.”
“She also testified that she generally did not pay attention to whether the recipient of her texts was driving a car at the time or not,” Ashrafi wrote.
Court papers say Colonna and Best, then 18, “were seeing each other socially but not exclusively” when they exchanged 62 texts on the day of the accident.
At his deposition, Best — who has settled the Kuberts’ suit against him for a confidential amount — falsely claimed “that he did not text when he began his drive home” from a part-time job at the Randolph Township YMCA.
“But he was soon confronted with the telephone records . . . and then admitted that he and Colonna exchanged messages within minutes of his beginning to drive,” Ashrafi wrote.
The Kuberts’ lawyer, Stephen “Skippy” Weinstein, said the appeals court ruling “went outside the box” and would likely set a precedent across the country.
Weinstein said the Kuberts have not decided whether to ask the New Jersey Supreme Court to re-instate their suit. Colonna’s lawyer didn’t return a request for comment.