#142 Beenleigh Special Hardship

Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Beenleigh Magistrates Court as he represents a client applying for a Special Hardship Licence. Watch Andrew explain what happened in the courtroom, along with the outcome which he achieved and how he achieved it.

All right. So now I'm at Beenleigh Magistrates Court, client received what's called a high speed suspension. So there's a number of ways in which Queensland transport can suspend your licence. One of them being, when you're caught driving in excess of 40 km over the speed limit. So for example, 100 in a 60 zone or 120 in a 80 zone. That's what happened to my client, for reasons that I won't discuss. He was intercepted, exceeding the speed limit by more than 40 km/h.

That triggered two things, an automatic six month suspension. I mean, it doesn't take effect the day you're intercepted, but you get an infringement notice. And then if you pay it, a couple of weeks later you'll get a letter saying, you're suspended for six months for having exceeded the speed limit by more than 40 km/h. And then once you pay it, a few weeks after that, you'll get a letter saying, okay, it starts today. But you'll also get eight demerit points.

Now, a lot of the time, given most people don't have a clean demerit point history. Those eight demerit points will also trigger a demerit point accumulation notice. So you've run out of points and that letter will give you a choice of an additional three month suspension for having lost demerit points or accumulated too many demerit points I should say. Or what's called a 12 month good driving behaviour period, which I won't go to it now, but it can give you two points to last a year. But if you're going to lose your licence for high speed as well, it can be a waste of time.

Unless you're eligible to apply for a high speed special hardship licence. To my client's credit, he had enough available points to absorb those eight demerit points. So he did not receive a notice to choose letter. So there was no letter saying you've run out of points, choose a good behaviour period, which is me basically saying he did not run out of points.

So in those eight points, didn't tip him over the wanted amount. But he did, by simple default of the fact that he was exceeding the speed limit by more than the 40 km/h, get a high speed suspension. He hadn't lost his licence for any reason in the last five years. And he satisfied a number of other prerequisites, which I won't go into now, for applying for a high speed special hardship licence. So he engaged me to do that. Now this is quite a prolonged matter.

He engaged me back in September of last year, he was employed... I'll say he was an electrician. I don't want to give away who he worked for or anything like that. But he worked for a government corporation as an electrician. In that situation, I needed to draught about an eight page affidavit up talking about, his financial situation, what happened, lessons he's learned, et cetera.

But probably more importantly, I've also got to do a four page affidavit up for his employer sign, saying that he will lose his job, if he lose his licence. They refuse to do that. And that leaves me in the position of either saying to the client, look, they're not going to sign it. You got two choices, we forget about it. Or you give me written instructions to summons the person at the top of the tree in that organisation to give evidence. He was all for me taking that course. And we actually adjourned the matter... When was it, May maybe, or probably in January, I think it was.

We adjourned it for a lengthy period so that I could serve the summons on the representative of the employer. And basically what happens there is, if you get summons to court, you must go. And if his employer didn't go, I can then say to the magistrate, well, they're not here. And I can ask the magistrate to issue a warrant for their arrest. So basically I file a summons. I arrange for these served on the key person, the CEO or whoever of an organisation. And if they don't rock up at court, a warrant for their arrest, not my client, the CEO's arrest gets issued and they end up sitting in jail until they start cooperating.

My client was all for it, but when it was time for him to put that in writing, he got cold feet and chose not to take that course. So what he did was, he parted ways with his employer, set up his own business and he's now acting as a self-employed subcontractor. Which means he no longer has an employer and there's therefor no need for a employer affidavit. But what I do need to do is... With his accountant, forecasting his profit loss over the next 12 months. So obviously he hasn't operated for a full 12 month cycle, so there's no profit loss statement to embed into the affidavit. So it's got to be done on estimates and forecasting.

And obviously we rely upon his accountant heavily to give us the figures that we need to build into the affidavit. So the long and short is, I had to redraft the affidavits based on the fact that he's now self-employed. Got him to do a reformatory course that we get all their clients to do. As I said, this matter's been dragged on since September I've adjourned it in his absence a number of times. But anyway, we met at court today for the final court date. Got him to sign some final paperwork and ran through the procedure and what he could expect. Myself and the representative from Queensland transport, the administrator say, look, the long and short of it is, I was successful in getting the application granted.

So he's now a granted permission as a self-employed person to drive for work purposes only. As I said, he's an electrician of sorts. So given his on call and [inaudible] and whatnot. He's got permission to drive at any time of the day, 24 hours, seven days a week. So literally it's as if he hasn't lost his licence. So free rein, 24/7 to drive, work purposes only, obviously he can't drive for movies and that kind of stuff.

But as far as earning an income goes, he hasn't lost his licence. He's understandably very relieved, [inaudible] given it's been going on almost a year. As I said, he first rang me in September of last year about this. And it's taken this long to get it resolved, but he's understandably very relieved, very happy. I'm Andrew Wiseman at Beenleigh Magistrates Court. Thanks for watching.