Join Wiseman Lawyers Traffic Lawyer Andrew Wiseman at Thursday Island Magistrates Court as he represents a client charged with High Range Drink Driving and Careless 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 Thursday Island Magistrates Court. It’s obviously halfway between Cape York and Papua New Guinea. Flew up from Brisbane yesterday. So via Cairns, and then into Horn Island, got the ferry over. Client was in quite a bit of strife reading of 0.252 and a charge of careless driving. So basically he’s left the road and hit a tree and blew 0.252. Worst case for high range drink driving is a lifetime loss of licence and the same for careless driving maximum lifetime. There’s no minimum for careless, but the magistrate’s still got a discretion to give it. Minimum for high range drink driving, which kicks in at 0.15 is six months. Six months was an unreasonable expectation for a reading 0.252 with collision. But obviously my job was to get it down as low as I possibly could. We got him to do the reformatory course we get all the clients to do, got him to get references based on a template we give to everyone.
I met him in court this morning. We had a conference, I ran through the submissions that I’d previously prepared. There was a few issues at play with regard to recording of convictions. I’m not going to go into detail, but there was concerns there. And I’m not going to explain why, but he was keen for a no convictions recorded, which wasn’t my primary aim given the seriousness of the matter. My main goal was to get the disqualifications and fines only. People do get jail terms for facts like this, even though it wasn’t dangerous driving, it was careless driving with a very high reading, but I did push for no conviction recorded on both charges. As I said, reasons I won’t go into now. Spoke at length about what the client does for a living. And the fact that being able to do it up here is nearly impossible without a licence, spoke about what he learned from the course and the incident itself and the difficulties he would suffer with a lengthy disqualification and recorded convictions.
Short version is, I was able to get a fine only for the careless driving. And I was able to persuade the magistrate not to go past a seven month disqualification. He’s already been off the road two months because he was given an immediate disqualification. And so it was a total of nine in reality, but seven months from today, fine only for the careless driving. And I was able to persuade the magistrate not to record convictions on both charges. So seven months disqualification, fines only, no convictions recorded on both charges. I’m Andrew Wiseman and I’m at Thursday Island Magistrates Court. Thanks for watching.