Motoring Advice Blog

We get a lot of clients calling us in relation to Drink Driving who want to try and avoid a disqualification.

The law is clear, if found guilty then the court have to disqualify you unless there are special reasons not to. These would include spiked drink, emergency or shortness of distance driven.

The only other way of avoiding a ban is by being found not guilty if, for example the police have made an error in the procedure.

We had a case like that this week. The police had filled the required form in. We always check the form to make sure that the police had followed the correct procedure. On the face of it they had but further enquiries with the client revealed that they had not warned him properly as to his right and the risk of prosecution.

In due course we were able to obtain the CCTV which showed that indeed they had not warned him and the case was thrown out.

It is important that all checks are made because this can mean the difference between being able to carry on driving or a lengthy ban. Not all solicitors check in as much detail as we do and not all solicitors know where or what to check, that’s why it is important to make sure you are represented by a specialist solicitor with experience in defending drink drivers.

We have never had a client go to another solicitors after they have instructed us and we are rightly proud of that record.

Very few firms can say that. We know that because we get a lot of clients who have initially gone elsewhere but then ask to change to us because they are not happy with the service.

It’s fair to say we have had clients come to us from most major drink driving firms. One in particular loses a lot of clients because their service does not appear to live up to the promises they make.

Over the last few months we have a couple of clients come to us from a high profile firm. We don’t ever talk about celebrity clients but we know that some firms do and it is easy to believe that they because of this they always do a good job.

When we saw the papers two things astonished us, firstly the huge fees this client had paid and secondly that this firm had ran the defence at the magistrates court and had not spotted an obvious error.

We spoke to the client and explained that apart from the very convoluted and expensive defence  that the other firm had been running there was an obvious defence.

We took over the appeal and the case was thrown out without him even having to give evidence. Needless to say he was delighted and a long stressful episode was finally over for him and he could put the trauma behind him.

We get a lot of difficult cases here, in terms of the technical difficulties involved but also because the story behind them can be so sad.

A recent case had both of these.

A client was charged with drink driving, she had been subjected to domestic abuse for a number of years. On this occasion she was assaulted by her partner after having had a drink. Terrified as to the consequences if she stayed she ran out of the house and jumped in her car to drive off to safety.

She was stopped very shortly after by the police that had been called for her protection. She was breathalised and was over the limit.

At trial we argued that she only drove because of an emergency and that she was under duress.

As you might imagine the court are very reluctant to find people not guilty on this basis. We needed to show that she had no alternative but to drive and importantly that she did not drive any further than she needed to. There are a lot of cases on this point and they all say to be found not guilty of drink driving you cannot drive any further than you need to. In a classic case (DPP V Tomkinson) the court decided, perhaps not surprisingly, that driving 72 miles to get away from someone was not reasonable.

We get asked about these sort of cases often and we will always give an honest appraisal of the chances of winning. Some cases are never going to be strong enough and we know that clients appreciate our honest views rather than simply running with every case so that we can increase our fees. In fact we turn away more cases than we take on.

We knew this one would be difficult but it had a lot of positive features. With our experience in these sort of cases and a combination of excellent case preparation and good skills in court by the barrister our client was found not guilty and allowed to carry on driving.