Legal Research

?Texting? and common sense

By Pamela

Text messages have become a staple of communication, but there are drawbacks as well as benefits to this form of social media.  Rep. James Smith will prefile a bill today in the SC House of Representatives that would ban texting while driving.   According to the State newspaper, “Smith’s bill, …, is one of three new measures put forth for the 2010 General Assembly to give law enforcement the power to ticket drivers who read or send text messages.”  Common sense, it seems, should be sufficient to prevent one from trying to text and drive, but apparently not.  So it needs to be made a criminal offense.

The United States Supreme Court will hear a case in its 2010 session about the privacy of text messages sent over devices provided by employers.  The case, Ontario v. Quon, which involves sexually explicit text messages sent by a California policeman to his girlfriend on a city-provided pager, will be heard in the spring.  A little common sense, professionalism, and perhaps some decorum, might have been useful in this case as well.   That’s right, decorum.  Go look it up.

[PRM]

Full post as published by Cocky Law Blawg on December 15, 2009 (boomark / email).