No Conviction or Disqualification for High Range Drink Driving

The Magistrate in Parramatta Local Court awarded our 32 year old client a ‘section 10’ for high range p.c.a. which means that he avoids a criminal conviction and gets his licence back.

Our client works as an Information Technology expert in a large Sydney-based company.

He lives with his wife and young daughter in Westmead.

The family attended an event in Parramatta where our client drank a number of alcoholic drinks throughout the course of the evening.

He stopped drinking between 10.30pm and 11pm, and only drank water after that.

He ‘felt fine’, although ‘a little tired’, and commenced driving home shortly after midnight.

He was pulled over for a roadside random breath test just before 12.20am.

He blew a positive reading, and was arrested and taken to the police station where he registered a reading of 0.170.

He was then charged with high range drink driving.

He saw a number of lawyers before seeing us.

He informed us that his job requires him to drive between various branches of his company at short notice to perform IT maintenance duties, and that his position may be reviewed if he has any criminal convictions.

We asked whether his employment contract might confirm this.

He produced the relevant parts of his contract which indeed confirmed both of those matters.

We advised him to undertake a Traffic Offender Program, to gather character references (including one from a work colleague) and to prepare a ‘letter of apology’ to the court describing his remorse and the impact that a conviction would have on his career and family.

We also referred him to see a counsellor.

We provided him and his ‘referees’ with detailed advice about how to prepare references.

We obtained a positive letter from the counsellor.

In court, it took a great deal of effort to finally convince the Magistrate to award our client a ‘section 10’, and to therefore allow him to keep his licence and avoid a conviction.

He was extremely satisfied with the result because he had previously been advised that it would be impossible to achieve a section 10 in his situation.