You’re stopped at a light. The car behind you isn’t. Afterward you see the other driver with his phone still in his hand, screen lit. He was breaking the law, and everybody at the scene knows it.
In your injury case, that’s a start. It isn’t a finish. Minnesota’s traffic code says, in a sentence that dates to 1937, that breaking a traffic law “shall not be negligence per se”. And a different section keeps his traffic conviction out of your civil trial altogether. A conviction doesn’t come in. A guilty plea doesn’t either.
So the phone matters. You just have to prove it the long way.
What does Minnesota’s hands-free law actually ban?
More than holding the phone, and the holding part is newer than people think.
(a) Except as provided in subdivision 3, when a motor vehicle is in motion or a part of traffic, the person operating the vehicle upon a street or highway is prohibited from:
(1) holding a wireless communications device with one or both hands; or
(2) using a wireless communications device to:
(i) initiate, compose, send, retrieve, or read an electronic message;
(ii) engage in a cellular phone call, including initiating a call, talking or listening, and participating in video calling; and
(iii) access the following types of content stored on the device: video content, audio content, images, games, or software applications.
— Minn. Stat. § 169.475, subd. 2(a)
Minnesota’s “hands-free” law took effect August 1, 2019. 2019 Minn. Laws ch. 11, § 3. But the 2019 version didn’t have clause (1). It banned using the phone for messages, calls, and stored content, with an exception for hands-free mode. The flat ban on simply holding the device came four years later, in the 2023 transportation bill, effective August 1, 2023. 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 68, art. 4, § 50. So for its first four years the hands-free law had no standalone ban on holding the phone; holding mattered only inside the exceptions. If your crash happened before August 1, 2023, check which version applied. It changes what you have to prove.
“In motion or a part of traffic” is defined against the driver. A vehicle is out of traffic only if it’s “lawfully stopped, is in a location that is not designed or ordinarily used for vehicular travel, and is not obstructing traffic.” § 169.475, subd. 1(d). All three. A lane at a red light is designed for travel, so I read the driver scrolling at the light as in traffic.
What can a driver still do with a phone?
Six things, and the statute lists them:
(1) solely in a voice-activated or hands-free mode to (i) initiate or participate in a cellular phone call, provided that the person does not hold the device with one or both hands; or (ii) initiate, compose, send, or listen to an electronic message;
(2) to view or operate a global positioning system or navigation system in a manner that does not require the driver to type while the vehicle is in motion or a part of traffic, provided that the person does not hold the device with one or both hands;
(3) to listen to audio-based content in a manner that does not require the driver to scroll or type while the vehicle is in motion or a part of traffic, provided that the person does not hold the device with one or both hands;
(4) to obtain emergency assistance to (i) report a traffic accident, medical emergency, or serious traffic hazard, or (ii) prevent a crime about to be committed;
(5) in the reasonable belief that a person’s life or safety is in immediate danger; or
(6) in an authorized emergency vehicle while in the performance of official duties.
— Minn. Stat. § 169.475, subd. 3(a)
And the hands-free exception has its own fine print. Clause (1) “does not apply to accessing nonnavigation video content, engaging in video calling, engaging in live-streaming, accessing gaming data, or reading electronic messages.” Subd. 3(b). “Hands-free mode” means voice or “single touch” commands, and it “does not include typing or scrolling on a device.” Subd. 1(c). So a phone in a dash mount isn’t a free pass. A driver reading a text off a mounted screen is outside every exception on the list.
How much is the ticket?
Not much, which tells you how the Legislature ranks this one.
Chapter 169 makes a violation a petty misdemeanor unless it says otherwise. Minn. Stat. § 169.89, subd. 1. A petty misdemeanor means no jury and no jail, and “a fine of not more than $300.” Subd. 2. For a second or later hands-free violation, the statute fixes the number: the driver “must pay a fine of $275.” § 169.475, subd. 2(b). The Department of Public Safety tells drivers to expect “$100 or more, including court fees for a first offense” and “$300 or more, including court fees for all subsequent offenses.”
There’s a bump in the general penalty statute. A chapter 169 violation committed “in a manner or under circumstances so as to endanger or be likely to endanger any person or property” is a misdemeanor instead. § 169.89, subd. 1(1). And the Department of Public Safety warns drivers that injuring or killing someone while on the phone can mean “[a] felony charge of criminal vehicular operation or homicide”, which is a different article.
For the driver who rear-ended you, the ticket is a hundred-dollar problem. Your medical bills aren’t.
Why isn’t breaking the hands-free law negligence per se?
Because the Legislature said so, and it said so before anybody had a phone in the car. Here’s the whole sentence:
In all civil actions, a violation of any of the provisions of this chapter, by either or any of the parties to such action or actions shall not be negligence per se but shall be prima facie evidence of negligence only.
— Minn. Stat. § 169.96(b)
The history line for that section reads 1937 and 1939. Every rule of the road in chapter 169, including the hands-free law, runs through it.
“Negligence per se” would mean the violation settles the negligence question: he broke the statute, he was negligent, move on to damages. Minnesota doesn’t do that for traffic violations. “Prima facie evidence” means the violation makes your case on negligence, and then the other driver gets to answer it. The Minnesota Supreme Court put the mechanics in one line: “Proof of a traffic violation shifts the burden to the violator to show excuse or justification for the violation or to rebut the prima facie case.” George v. Estate of Baker, 724 N.W.2d 1, 7 (Minn. 2006).
What does an excuse look like in a phone case? The statute’s own exceptions are the obvious ones. A driver who says he grabbed the phone to call 911 about the crash in front of him is invoking clause (4). A driver who says the phone slid off the seat and he caught it is arguing he wasn’t really “holding” it in the sense the statute means. Juries hear those stories and decide whether they believe them. And remember the word “either” in § 169.96(b). It applies to “either or any of the parties”. If you were the one on the phone, the same rule cuts against you.
Can I use his ticket or his guilty plea against him?
No. This is the part that surprises people the most.
No record of the conviction of any person for any violation of this chapter shall be admissible as evidence in any court in any civil action.
— Minn. Stat. § 169.94, subd. 1
The Minnesota Supreme Court read that broadly in 1943. A defendant’s lawyer asked the injured plaintiff, on the stand, whether he’d pleaded guilty to a traffic charge from the same crash. The court agreed that “the statute aside, such a question would be proper as an admission against interest.” Then: “The legislature, however, in our opinion, has closed the door to an inquiry into a violation under the traffic act in any civil action.” Warren v. Marsh, 215 Minn. 615, 620 (1943). In 1984 the Court of Appeals relied on Warren and held it was error to tell a civil jury about a driver’s guilty plea and conviction, though harmless on that record. Anderson v. Blair, 358 N.W.2d 708, 712 (Minn. Ct. App. 1984).
The door swings one way, though. The statute “precludes merely the introduction of the fact of a conviction of a traffic violation and does not prohibit the introduction of evidence showing that no tickets were issued.” LeClair v. Sickler, 275 Minn. 320, 325, 146 N.W.2d 853 (1966). So in the right circumstances the driver who never got a ticket may be able to tell the jury that, and the driver who got one and was convicted can’t be confronted with the conviction. Funny how that works.
What the statute keeps out is the conviction. It doesn’t keep out the facts. The officer who saw the phone can say what he saw. So can the witness in the next lane. And a driver’s own words at the scene are a different thing from a conviction; in LeClair, the jury heard officers repeat what the driver told them about his speed. You build the phone case the way you’d build it if the ticket never existed.
So how do you prove the phone was in his hand?
With records the driver doesn’t control.
The carrier. Federal law generally bars a phone company from knowingly divulging “the contents of a communication while in electronic storage”, 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a)(1), subject to exceptions in the statute. The same section lets a carrier disclose non-content customer records “to any person other than a governmental entity”. § 2702(c)(6). In a civil case that usually means you’re not getting the words. You’re getting the log: when a text went out, when a call connected, when data moved. Lay that next to the crash time and you often have your answer.
The phone itself. A forensic image of the device can show activity the carrier log can’t, like an app open on the screen. Getting at it usually means a discovery fight, and it means demanding that the phone be preserved before it gets traded in.
The car. Most cars on the road now carry an event data recorder, and plenty collect a lot more than that. I covered who owns that data and who can get it at /news/your-car-is-reporting-on-you-driving-data-minnesota/. If the car’s own data shows no braking before it hit a stopped car, the driver has some explaining to do, and the car doesn’t care what he told the officer.
Every one of those sources has a shelf life. Send preservation letters early.
What if I was the one on the phone?
Then § 169.96(b) works against you, and Minnesota’s comparative fault statute decides how much. Your fault doesn’t bar recovery “if the contributory fault was not greater than the fault of the person against whom recovery is sought,” but “any damages allowed must be diminished in proportion to the amount of fault attributable to the person recovering.” Minn. Stat. § 604.01, subd. 1. A pedestrian looking at a phone, a cyclist taking a call, a driver who glanced down at a red light: all of that goes on the verdict form. I walked through how the percentages work at /news/minnesota-comparative-fault-collateral-source/, and through the pedestrian and bike version at /news/minnesota-bicycle-pedestrian-crash-claims/.
Before any of that, your own no-fault coverage is usually first in line for medical bills and lost wages, whoever was on the phone. I explained the no-fault order of payment at /news/minnesota-no-fault-auto-basics/.
Is texting and driving enough for punitive damages?
That’s the question everybody asks, and Minnesota sets a high bar. Punitive damages require “clear and convincing evidence that the acts of the defendant show deliberate disregard for the rights or safety of others.” Minn. Stat. § 549.20, subd. 1(a). The statute defines that phrase:
(b) A defendant has acted with deliberate disregard for the rights or safety of others if the defendant has knowledge of facts or intentionally disregards facts that create a high probability of injury to the rights or safety of others and:
(1) deliberately proceeds to act in conscious or intentional disregard of the high degree of probability of injury to the rights or safety of others; or
(2) deliberately proceeds to act with indifference to the high probability of injury to the rights or safety of others.
— Minn. Stat. § 549.20, subd. 1(b)
A driver who’s been told for years by the State of Minnesota that the phone kills people, and who types a text at 60 miles an hour anyway, is the argument. Whether a Minnesota court will accept it on phone use alone is open. I couldn’t find a published Minnesota appellate decision deciding whether driving while using a phone, by itself, is deliberate disregard; I ran it through CourtListener several ways, by the statute numbers and by the words a court would use, and came up empty. If I were building that motion, I’d want more than the phone: speed, a long stretch of eyes-down driving shown in the logs, a history of hands-free tickets, a commercial driver whose employer had a no-phone policy.
On that last one, an employer pays punitive damages for its driver’s conduct only in the four situations § 549.20, subdivision 2 lists, such as when the employer “authorized the doing and the manner of the act” or a managerial agent “ratified or approved the act while knowing of its character and probable consequences.” And you can’t put punitive damages in your complaint in the first place. You need the court’s permission on a motion with affidavits. I explained that procedure at /news/minnesota-punitive-damages-permission-549191/.
How often does this happen?
Often enough that the state ran an enforcement campaign in April 2026. The Department of Public Safety’s Office of Traffic Safety reported on April 1, 2026, that from 2020 through 2025 there were 33,183 distracted-driving crashes in Minnesota, resulting in 888 serious injuries and 162 deaths. For 2025 alone, it counted at least 21 deaths and 159 serious injuries related to distracted driving. During that April’s enforcement month, 296 law enforcement agencies reported 5,426 hands-free citations, according to the department’s May 14, 2026 release. That’s thirty days.
Five thousand tickets in a month. Not one conviction that comes out of them can be shown to a civil jury. The phone records can.
Madgett Law, LLC
Madgett Law, LLC represents people hurt in Minnesota car and truck crashes, including the no-fault and uninsured and underinsured motorist layers most people don’t know they have. In a phone case, what matters early is preserving the carrier records, the device, and the vehicle data before they’re gone, and knowing which of them a Minnesota court will let a jury see. Read about our personal injury practice, then send us a message.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 169.475, subd. 1(c) (voice-activated or hands-free mode), subd. 1(d) (not in motion or a part of traffic), subd. 2(a) (prohibitions), subd. 2(b) ($275 for second or subsequent violation), subd. 3(a)–(b) (exceptions); 2019 Minn. Laws ch. 11, §§ 2–3 (effective August 1, 2019); 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 68, art. 4, §§ 50–51 (holding prohibition; effective August 1, 2023); Minn. Stat. § 169.89, subd. 1(1) (petty misdemeanor; misdemeanor where the violation endangers), subd. 2 (fine of not more than $300); Minn. Stat. § 169.94, subd. 1 (record of conviction not admissible in a civil action); Minn. Stat. § 169.96(b) (prima facie evidence of negligence only); Minn. Stat. § 604.01, subd. 1 (comparative fault); Minn. Stat. § 549.20, subd. 1(a)–(b) (punitive damages; deliberate disregard), subd. 2 (principal liability); Minn. Stat. § 549.191 (no punitive damages in the complaint; motion with affidavits); 18 U.S.C. § 2702(a)(1), (c)(6) (stored contents; non-content customer records); George v. Estate of Baker, 724 N.W.2d 1, 7 (Minn. 2006); Warren v. Marsh, 215 Minn. 615, 620 (1943); Anderson v. Blair, 358 N.W.2d 708, 712 (Minn. Ct. App. 1984); LeClair v. Sickler, 275 Minn. 320, 325, 146 N.W.2d 853 (1966); Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Office of Traffic Safety, news releases of April 1, 2026 (“Pay attention, prevent tragedy”) and May 14, 2026 (“Nearly 5,500 drivers cited for hands-free cell phone violations during April distracted driving campaign”). This article is general information about Minnesota law, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied.