#187 Moranbah Drink Driving

Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Moranbah 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 Moranbah Magistrates Court. It's about two hours west of Mackay, but I actually flew direct to Moranbah last night. Ordinarily, given the cost of flights, normally you can fly to Los Angeles's cheaper than you can Moranbah direct, but I actually got some good flight prices. So, I flew in direct for once.

Client was charged with high range drink-driving, a reading of 0.190. It was a first offence. He was not eligible to apply for a work licence, given the cutoff for that's 0.150. Worst case is a lifetime loss of licence, managed for a minimum is six months. But with readings of 0.190, it's unreasonable to expect the minimum. As I said, that kicks in at 0.150, whereas 0.19 is well past that.

Obviously, my job is one of getting disqualification down as low as possible, but also, given... He works in mining, that's a global sector with a need to go overseas if you've got work overseas, so he had concerns about the recording of the conviction as well. So my job is one of A, getting the disqualification down as low as possible, and B, pushing for no conviction recorded.

With regard to conviction, drink-driving, even readings of point 0.190, is not a criminal offence. It's a traffic offence. So you don't get a criminal conviction, but you ordinarily get a traffic conviction. So, because a traffic conviction is of lesser consequence than a criminal conviction, it's harder to get. So, criminal conviction has caused more problems for people. And for that reason, it can be easy to get no conviction recorded. But with traffic offences, given it's hard to show that it causes significant detriment, it can be difficult to get no traffic eviction recorded. But for a number of reasons, that I'm not going to go through now, in addition to the sector he works in, I thought it appropriate to push for no conviction recorded, not withstanding the reading.

With regard to preparation, we've got our client to do the course, we get all of their clients to do. Got him to get references based on a template, we provide all of their clients. I prepared my submissions yesterday before flying up. As I said, flew up yesterday afternoon. Met the client at court this morning. There's no real conference room here, but we just grabbed a bit of space at the front of the court building. Ran through my submissions, the procedure, what he can expect the prosecutor to say, procedurally, what the magistrates likely to say.

I pushed hard for the last possible disqualification that I could, and I also pushed hard for no conviction recorded. I received quite a bit of resistance from the magistrate on the issue of not recording conviction, primarily because it's not a criminal matter. And I really did have my work cut out for me. I sort of dodged and weaved between a few, key points, which I'm not going to go through now. But as I said, I had my work cut out for me and had to work quite a bit harder than I expected I would. And to be honest, the magistrate didn't give much away during the actual court hearing. So, I wasn't sure which direction they were going in.

But the short version is, I was successful on both fronts. A, in getting the disqualification down as low as possible. I was able to persuade the magistrate to not go past the management of six months. So he got a six month disqualification for his reading of 0.190. And I was also successful in persuading the magistrate not to record a conviction. So for a reading of 0.190, six month disqualification, which is the mandatory minimum, no conviction recorded, modest fine, the client's obviously very relieved and very happy.

I'm Andrew Wiseman at Moranbah Magistrates Court. Thanks for watching.