Texas court says woman can’t be sued for distracting trucker with racy phone call prior to fatal crash

A Texas court dismissed a lawsuit accusing a woman of causing a fatal semi truck collision by distracting the truck driver involved with an explicit phone call.

On June 4, 2026, the Fourteenth Court of Appeals upheld the previous dismissal of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Jocelyn Ortega, 27, against Inger Washington.

Ortega was killed in a crash that occurred on June 6, 2022, on I-45 towards Dallas, Texas.

UPDATE: Two Centerville firefighters struck by a semi today on I-45 in Leon County are expected to survive. One has a serious leg injury. The firefighters were on the highway helping with a minor crash when the truck plowed into them. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/kgRux7UFFS

— Rusty Surette (@RustySuretteTV) June 7, 2022

According to court documents, Ortega was involved in a previous rear-end crash with driver Lindsay Vermillion on I-45. At the direction of law enforcement, Ortega and Vermillion waited in their vehicles on the shoulder of the center median of the divided highway. A fire truck was blocking the left lane, and traffic was backed up in the right lane.

Truck driver Thomas Earl Roberts approached the scene and swerved to avoid the fire truck. The swerve caused him to lose control of his semi truck, which rolled and struck Ortega’s vehicle, causing her death.

Two firefighters were also injured in the crash.

The lawsuit alleged that Roberts was “distracted because he was ‘engaging in phone or video sex’ with [Washington] while he drove his eighteen-wheeler.”

“Appellants allege that [Washington] engaged in phone or video sex with Roberts even though she knew or should have known Roberts was driving and that [Washington] ‘was a proximate cause of the collision and the injuries to the Plaintiffs’,” the court documents state.

The court ultimately upheld the previous ruling that a remote caller cannot be held responsible for the behavior of the driver on the end of the line under Texas law.

“Given that the relevant duty and no duty rules arguably recognized by the supreme court and our sister courts do not impose a duty on a remote cellphone caller to control the conduct of a call recipient who is operating a vehicle, we conclude there is no such duty,” the court stated. “Because we conclude that a remote cellphone caller owes no duty to the general public to control the conduct of a call recipient who is operating a vehicle, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.”