#173 Noosa Drink Driving

Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Noosa Magistrates Court as he represents a client charged with Drink Driving. Watch Andrew explain what happened in the courtroom, along with the outcome which he achieved and how he achieved it.

All right. Today I'm at Noosa Magistrates Court. Client was charged with mid range drink driving with single vehicle accident. So it was a reading of 0.098. Basically he's left the road and rolled down an embankment. So driving like a dual cab ute, misjudged the turn and rolled and came to a rest in a ditch. No other vehicles involved, was just him. But obviously if you got alcohol in your system and you roll the vehicle, you're in a bit of strife. Again, reading 0.098. To put it perspective, mid range starts at 0.100, so he was just a fraction well, literally 0.002 shy of mid range. The penalty range for mid range is a maximum 18 months, mandatory minimum three months. Because he was a fraction inside the low range bracket, so low range is 0.05 to 0.099, he was 0.098, that made him fall into the low range bracket.

Worst case is a nine month loss of licence, mandatory minimum one month. But the mandatory minimum one month kicks in at 0.05 and the further north you go of that, the harder it is to get it down and if there's a collision, particularly a serious one with a rollover, you're not going to get one month. If you're touching the mandatory minimum for mid range, so as I said, that starts 0.100, that starts at three months and if you're touching that, which he was at 0.098 with a collision, if you can get it to three months or lower, that's a good outcome. But again, worst case today was nine months, technically minimum one month. But I said to the client going in, given the reading, given the rollover, I'm going to push for two to three months. And if we get that, it's a good outcome.

And again, if you go in there asking for one month for that reading and a rollover, you're just going to get screamed out of the court and the pendulum will swing. You'll end up with some stupid outcome, like six to eight months. Got the client to get to do the course that we get all of our clients to do, got him to get references based on the template we provide all of our clients, got my instructions prior to today, I prepared my submissions prior to today. Drove up this morning, met him at court, we grabbed a conference room, ran through, my submissions, what he can expect the prosecutor and magistrate to say, we went through the police brief and all the relevant documentation. Spoke at length about expected outcomes. We went in, I spoke for some time to the magistrate, but given all the bases that I covered in my verbal submissions and the fact that the client did everything I asked him to do, I was able to persuade the magistrate to stick to the penalty range that I submitted.

So, as I said, I submitted a penalty range of two to three months. The magistrate ultimately agreed with that and handed a two month disqualification. So client's very happy. Just to recap, 0.098 with vehicle rollover. Got him the two month disqualification, which was at the bottom of the two to three month range that I was pushing for. Worst case is nine months, so for that reading and a collision, which it was single vehicle rollover, two months is a very good outcome. Again, client's very happy. I'm Andrew Wiseman at Noosa Magistrates Court. Thanks for watching.