Court rulings released Friday have affirmed that holding a cellphone or any other wireless communication device — even briefly — while driving is illegal under the Highway Traffic Act.

The two rulings released Friday by the Court of Appeal for Ontario on separate, unrelated cases, make it plain that there are no exceptions to the law.

The Highway Traffic Act 78.1 (1) prohibits anyone from driving a motor vehicle while holding or using a hand-held wireless communication device, such as a cellphone.

Two Ontario cases had recently brought the law into focus.

Khojasteh Kazemi, of Oshawa, was charged and convicted in 2010 of holding her cellphone after she’d picked it up while stopped at a red light. A provincial court judge later overturned that conviction, but the Crown appealed.

In its judgment ruling, the Court of Appeal for Ontario stated that “road safety is best ensured by a complete prohibition on having a cellphone in one’s hand at all while driving. A complete prohibition also best focuses a driver’s undivided attention on driving.”

The court disagreed with the provincial court judge’s ruling that to be charged for holding the phone required “sustained physical holding.”

In the other case, the court restored the conviction of Hugo Pizzurro, who had been charged under the Highway Traffic Act with driving on Highway 11 with a cellphone in his hand. He was originally convicted in 2011 but appealed in 2012 and won.

The appeal judge had said that the prosecutor had failed to show that the cellphone was capable of receiving or transmitting communications.

But the Court of Appeal for Ontario stated in its judgment that the Crown does not have to prove whether a hand-held wireless communication device is working or not to get a conviction under the HTA.

That would be “unreasonable both for enforcement and for prosecution. The legislature could not have intended that result,’’ the decision stated.

Both of Friday’s decisions by the Court of Appeal for Ontario were unanimous rulings by Justices John Laskin, David Watt and S.T. Goudge.

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