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reasons for either reducing the disqualification or not disqualifying at all. Here the argument would be on the basis of “laced drinks” - and if the court found in our favour you may come away with no ban at all.
In order to run a laced drinks argument there are three criteria that we would need to show:
• Firstly, we would need evidence that your drinks were laced. This means getting evidence from your friends who bought you doubles without telling you. They would all need to give statements and probably would need to come to court to give evidence as well. Unfor- tunately I cannot guarantee that your friends would not get into trouble. They may be prosecuted for causing you to drink drive and could receive ten points.
• Secondly, we would need to show that you did not know nor suspect that your drinks had been laced with additional alcohol. So this means we would need to explore whether they told you, whether you tasted the difference and whether you felt more drunk than usual.
• Thirdly, we would need to show that without the addi- tional alcohol you would have been under the legal limit. It ismore than likely we will need to get a toxicologist to provide an expert report for the court to show this.
But we need to get to work quickly. There are often strict deadlines and timetables in these types of cases and if wemiss those deadlines to serve witness statements and expert reports then we may not be allowed to rely on vital evidence at the hearing.
Q A
I was banned a month ago for totting up. I was recorded speeding at 41mph in a 30mph limit, I had nine points already and the court gave me another four points and banned me for six months.
I’m an HGV driver and I thought I could try and get by for six months and live on savings so I didn’t even bother going to the court and they just banned me without me being there. But it’s proving more difficult and my sav- ings are running out quickly, and now I’m at risk of falling into arrears with my mortgage. So now I want to lodge an appeal and try to get the ban overturned.
We would need to lodge an appeal urgently. If you were in court a month ago we may already be outside of time. You only have a 21-day right of appeal from the Magistrates’ Courts and any
appeal lodged outside of 21 days has to go to a Crown Court Judge who will decide whether to grant ‘leave to appeal’. That needs to be done urgently. We must explain in very clear circumstances exactly why we are
AUGUST 2018
outside of the 21 days and then it is up to the Crown Court Judge whether to grant leave or not.
If leave to appeal is refused then I’m afraid there is noth- ing we can do.
If leave to appeal is agreed then we will need to get your ban suspended, pending the appeal, so that you can drive whilst we are waiting for a court date. That can be done through a simple application to the Crown Court, although that too is at the discretion of the Crown Court Judge.
After that your case is then listed at the Crown Court for an appeal.
When somebody accumulates 12 points on their driving licence they are at risk of a six-month disqualification; however that disqualification is not mandatory, it is dis- cretionary, and the court has the discretion not to disqualify if they consider that a disqualification would cause “exceptional hardship”. It does notmatter that you did not present this argument at the Magistrates’ Court; we can still present it at the Crown Court.
We would have to show that the loss of your licence would be exceptional, and so we will need to discuss in detail exactly what you do for a living and the effect it would have on you and, importantly, others around you if you were disqualified.
However, there is another way around this – for speeding at 41 in a 30 the sentencing guidelines actually suggest either four to six penalty points or a disqualification of between seven to 28 days. And so it is possible that we could go down the route of asking the Court to ban you for seven to 28 days instead of imposing points,meaning you don’t end up with 12 or more points on your licence and we don’t have to go down the exceptional hardship route. The benefit is that an exceptional hardship argu- ment can only be used once every three years and so here we can keep it in our locker for another day. This may also be beneficial because as you have already served a fairly lengthy disqualification we can ask the court to treat that as time served so you don’t actually have any more time off the road.
Call me as soon as possible so we can get the appeal lodged and we can discuss our options.
This impartial advice has been provided by Patterson Law Solicitors Patterson Law - 0800 021 7753
www.pattersonlaw.co.uk
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