#180 Brisbane Drink Driving

Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Brisbane 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 Brisbane Magistrates Court. Our client was charged with high range drink driving. Reading a 0.196, so essentially four times the legal limit. She was also charged with failing to provide particulars after a crash. So basically she's clipped another vehicle, caused damage to it and continued on. If you have any kind of accident, whether you've got alcohol in your system or not, you need to stop and exchange your identifying particulars. And if you don't, it is an offence. So yeah, 0.196 and far [inaudible] particular. So basically she's yeah, driving along, there was a parked car with its door open, she's clipped it, that door slams shut and this damage to both her vehicle and the other vehicle. Worst case is a lifetime loss of licence. So, technically you can get a lifetime loss of licence.

You can go there with the worst law in Queensland. You're generally not going to get a lifetime for a first offence, but I do see people not getting much change in it, two years for readings like that 0.196 with a collision. Mandatory minimum is six months, but that kicks in at 0.15, with no collision. So you're mad if you go to court with a reading a 0.196 with a collision, trying to get the minimum six months, you will end up with two years if you go ask for something unreasonable like that.

When clients are pushing 0.2 with a collision, we always say if we can get it under 12 months, it's a good outcome. We have got it less than that. We've got it as light. We look, we have got the minimum on occasions, but that's more the exception than the rule. We have got it down to eight months, 10 months, but we generally indicate 12 months as an expected outcome with this firm.

As I said, if you go there by yourself with the law that doesn't specialise, you know? Yeah. You're not going to get much change out of two years or even with a competent lawyer, generally 18 months if they don't specialise in traffic. And the bottom line is, Wiseman Lawyers is the only firm that legitimately specialises in traffic law. When you Google drink driving lawyer, yes a lot of websites pop up, but they're all hosted by general practise law firms or criminal law firms if you're lucky, that have got multiple websites. So they'll have a drink driving website, they'll have an assault website, et cetera. Whereas, Wiseman Lawyers it's strictly driving and driving related offences. So drug, alcohol and traffic. So if it happened in a vehicle and you're at risk of loss of licence or jail or anything between, that's what we do. Anyway I'm going off point, as I said, worst case was technically a lifetime loss of licence. Mandatory minimum six months, but we considered 12 months for that reading 0.196 and collision to be good outcome, and that's what I was pushing for.

On occasions, I will adjust what I'm asking for, depending on how the matter plays out in the day of court, but on this occasion, given the magistrate that walked out, because you never know in advance. Given the magistrate that walked out and my knowledge of their attitudes to this type of offending, given the prosecutor that we had, I was dealing with a prosecutor and a magistrate that are hard to budge on this issue. So in one instance, on one occasion where I might push for 10 to 12 or, or 8 to 10, I thought, no, I'll stick to my no more than 12 months submission. Got my client to do a number of things, do the online reformatory course we get all of our clients to do, get references based on the template we give all of our clients.

Given she had underlying mental health issues, I needed evidence of that. So I got her to get letters from the relevant providers to address what she's going through, but also what she's doing about it. A lot of people go to court claiming to have mental health issues and a lot of the time it's self-diagnosed and untreated. So there's no proof that they've actually got a condition and there's no proof that they've done anything about it. So I rarely address mental health unless I can show that it's legit and show that there's legit steps being taken to make sure drink driving isn't going to be the way that it's dealt with in the future. Look, the long and short of it is, I was ultimately successful.

As I said, there was a fair bit of chest beating in there today because the prosecutor was of the view that the collision was more serious than I was of the view that it was. The magistrate was getting agitated because it was a bit vague in the police description of what happened. So I had to sort of beat my chest a bit a) to ensure that there wasn't an enforced adjournment because the magistrate was leaning towards adjourning it to get more information. But in my view, it's not like that. If the police say, they're ready to roll, they're ready to roll. You don't get to say you're ready to go and then ambush the defence with a demanded adjournment. Some magistrates will dish them out, others won't and the magistrate today was almost going to adjourn it so the police could provide more details of the collision, but I was ultimately able to jump up and down and make sure that didn't happen because it doesn't help my client.

We've already waited a bit of time for today's date. I'm not going to delay it further just because people are under resourced. I mean, police are... It's not secret that the police are grossly under resourced, but at the end of the day, it's not the defendant's problem, it's government's problem. Anyway, I'm prattling on now, as I said, 12 months disqualification, fines for both offences. I mean, failure to provide particulars is a fineable offence anyway, but 12 months disqualification and fines. Clients very happy and relieved. Given this could have gone all manner of pear shaped. She's relieved, very happy. I'm Andrew Wiseman, [inaudible] Brisbane Magistrates Court. Thanks for watching.