VIDEO: Unlicensed Driving Demerit Point Suspended Normanton Mags Ct

I recently flew from Brisbane to Normanton Magistrates Court in the Gulf of Carpentaria to represent a client charged with repeat Unlicensed Driving While Demerit Point Suspended.

My client was unaware that he was suspended, as he never received the Queensland Transport suspension notice.

Unfortunately, in Queensland, once a Queensland Transport or State Penalties Enforcement Registry suspension notice is posted, it is deemed served.

In other words, you are at law considered to have received it once it has been posted.

So, all that needs to be proven for a person to be found guilty is that the notice had been mailed.

Persons charged with Demerit Point Suspended Unlicensed Driving in Queensland face a maximum penalty of a 6 month driver’s licence disqualification, 1 year imprisonment and 40 penalty units.

Magistrates also have a general power to impose up to a lifetime driver’s licence disqualification, above and beyond any legislated disqualification ranges.

At the time of appearing at Normanton I was of the opinion that it was unlikely a Magistrate would exercise this general power.

However, I am now seeing more and more instances of Magistrates handing down disqualifications beyond that of the mandatory 6 months.

A penalty unit in Queensland is currently valued at $113.85.

I was able to negotiate, or ‘plea bargain’, a lesser charge for my client with Police Prosecutions.

The Prosecutors amended the charge to Unlicensed Driving ‘Simplicita’, which is the same charge a person receives for having driven on an expired licence.

Unlicensed Driving Simplicita carried no mandatory licence disqualification.

I was able to persuade the Magistrate to impose a $100 fine only.

To confirm, my client did not lose their licence.

When I attend regional courts I like to film episodes of our YouTube series 'Wiseman Lawyers Ride Alongs'.

I do this partly to show potential clients such as yourself what it is exactly that we do, and partly to prove that we do and will literally go anywhere in Queensland.

I can get a 6am flight out of Brisbane and be standing on the steps of court at Townsville for example at 8:30am waiting for the doors to open, and then be back in Brisbane in time for lunch.

Regards

Andrew Wiseman, Wiseman Lawyers

Ph: 1300947352

andrew.wiseman@wisemanlawyers.com.au

wisemanlawyers.com.au

Why not also check out the following epsiodes:

• Careless Driving | Rockhampton Magistrates Court
• Special Hardship Order | Roma Magistrates Court
• Drink Driving | Blackwater Magistrates Court

Hi, I'm Andrew Wiseman and welcome back to Wiseman Lawyers Court Ride Alongs, Gulf of Carpentaria edition.

Once again, I'm Andrew Wiseman, owner and Principal Solicitor of Wiseman Lawyers, Queensland's only truly dedicated traffic law firm.

As I say in every episode, when I say only truly dedicated traffic law firm, all we do is prevention and minimisation of loss of license and the only courts we service are in Queensland, but that said we literally will go everywhere in Queensland.

I'm in beautiful Normanton in the Gulf of Carpentaria today, Friday had a matter at Mackay, day before that Toowoomba, and you'll remember from the last episode I was at Cairns the Friday before that.

I did say that the next episode would be filmed at Toowoomba, but we are just flat here and I just didn't get time to film anything.

On that occasion, I represented two clients. One was charged with .077, he was eligible to apply for a work licence but given that he wasn't going to lose his job, it wasn't appropriate to apply for a work licence, so I just went in and endeavoured to get the best possible outcome I could, which I did.

He was facing a maximum nine months and I achieved the mandatory minimum of one month.

The other client blew .156, that's high range.

As you'll remember from previous episodes, when you're high range there is no maximum.

The magistrate if he or she wants to can give you a lifetime loss of licence and the mandatory minimum is six months, and that's what I achieved for that client.

So he got the mandatory minimum six months with no other penalty.

There was no fine. I should add the other client with the .077, I achieved a non-recording in the conviction, so no recorded conviction.

All right, the young man who's engaged me today, he's been charged with driving on a demerit point suspended licence.

Initially, when he contacted me he told me that he been charged with driving on a SPER suspended licence, the difference being SPER is an acronym for State Penalties Enforcement Registry.

If you forget to pay a fine, SPER will suspend your licence.

The penalty range for being caught driving on a SPER suspended license is one to six months.

So when I was initially contacted my objective was to get the disqualification down to the mandatory minimum one month.

But when I received the police brief, what had happened is the charging officer charged him with the wrong charge.

What he was supposed to have been charged with was driving on a demerit point suspended licence meaning someone who's run out of points and been given a demerit point suspension, and he was actually caught driving on a demerit point suspension, on a SPER suspension.

That carries a mandatory six month disqualification and the bottom line is we ordinarily don't accept jobs where people have been charged with that because there's no mandatory minimum or maximum, it's a fixed six months.

So with or without a lawyer, if you're charged with driving on a demerit point suspended licence, you face a mandatory six month disqualification, no more no less.

So, as I've said, ordinarily a lawyer would have no bearing on the disqualification and all they'd have is an impacton the fine and by the time you paid the lawyer's fee the benefit in getting the fine reduced wouldn't be the worth the expense of the lawyer.

However, given my client's circumstances, he lives in the middle of nowhere, Karumba, which is 70 km's north of Normanton.

He's an apprentice electrician, so without a licence he will be on the dole queue.

So I just thought it was appropriate for me to try and negotiate with the police, so in layman's terms, plea bargain with the prosecutions.

What I've done is I've made a written submission to the police prosecutions explaining the situation, explaining the hardship that my client will suffer if he loses his licence, and basically painting a rounded picture of the law, my client's situation, and the discretion that the police have to amend charges where they see fit.

I haven't got a response as yet, so me coming here is very much a gamble today, and obviously the negotiations will continue on the steps of court but I'm confident that they're going to reduce the charge somewhat.

I've put two possibilities to the prosecutions to consider.

One that they reinstate the initial charge that my client was erroneously charged with, meaning driving on a SPER suspended licence that way the mandatory minimum drops down to one month as opposed to six months, which he currently faces.

The other alternative is I've asked that they consider reducing the charge to what's called unlicensed driving simplicita.

Simplicita being a fancy Latin term for base level.

I've asked that the charge be reduced to unlicensed driving base level, meaning the same charge someone would receive if they simply forgot to renew their licence.

So I've put both of those options to the prosecutions.

A big part of me is thinking that both options are wishful thinking given demerit point suspended driving is a serious offence. I

t's pretty hard to sort of claim that you didn't know because you know everyone's got a vague idea of how many points they've got or don't have, and the mindset of the magistrate and the prosecution is that, "You should have seen it coming even if you didn't get the notice".

So we'll see where we go.

I've made pretty firm yet reasonable submissions to police prosecutions, hopefully one of the alternatives will be taken up by the prosecutor and hopefully my client will, in a perfect world, receive no disqualification and a fine only but in a slightly less perfect world, a mandatory minimum one month disqualification for the driving whilst SPER suspended charge.

All right, well I'm pulling up to the court house now.

So I'll head on in and I'll see you back in the car after court and let you know how we went.

Nathan of Gladstone writes, "I cannot thank Mr. Wiseman and his team enough for the great job they did for me. I was extremely worried when I was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol as I recorded a high level breath analysis reading. However, Mr. Wiseman and his team advised me exactly what to do, guided me through the process, and achieved the best result possible for me. I received the minimum applicable mandatory license disqualification, a minimal fine, and no conviction was recorded. All thanks to Mr. Wiseman's advice and well researched submissions. Mr. Wiseman is a consummate professional and a genuine nice guy. He ticks all the boxes, which helps put you at ease during the stressful court process. I was also impressed with the value for money provided by Wiseman Lawyers. The fixed fee is very reasonable and worth every cent. I would happily pay twice as much to secure the results Mr. Wiseman achieved for me."

Righty-o. Job done. Okay, it's hot up here. Righty-o.

Firstly, the police accepted my submission, the better of the two suggestions, meaning they agreed to reduce the charge to unlicensed simplicita, which you remember is the base level charge.

So they reduced it.

So, you remember when he first contacted me he was facing a one to six month disqualification and then that was raised to the mandatory six months for the charge that he should have been charged with, which was driving under the demerit point suspended licence.

The police agreed to reduce that to base level which carries no mandatory disqualification.

With that said, the magistrate still has the discretion to give an unlimited disqualification.

So the worst case scenario even with the accepted written submission to the police was a lifetime loss of licence, no mandatory minimum, and I was able to persuade the magistrate to give him a fine only and that magistrate decided that a fine of a $100 was appropriate.

So no loss of licence, the only penalty was a fine of $100, but obviously he will have to pay the $110 offender levy, which the Newman government brought in.

So basically he's got to pay about $220 in court fees, no loss of license, and obviously no loss of job.

So it goes without saying he's ecstatic.

So yeah, no loss of licence, no loss of job, fine only.

He's really, really happy and, yeah, job done.

So that's me done in Normanton, in the beautiful Gulf of Carpentaria.I've now got the six hour drive ahead of me back to Mount Isa.

I would've liked to flown, but because I was at Mackay on Friday I just wasn't able to make the flight, and there's no flights on the weekends in most of these remote localities.

So, yeah, drive back to Mount Isa and get the 6:50 flight back to Brisbane in time for a special hardship order application at Wynnum tomorrow.

Thanks once again for watching and yeah have a good one. Cheers.