I want to talk to you about a recent DUI case that I had in London court recently. The client was ecstatic. I won’t get into the facts because I don’t want to identify the client for obvious reasons.We had a very hard fought trial. This is probably the most complicated impaired driving trial I’ve been involved in. One of the more complicated ones I’ve seen. The trial took place, 6 solid days of trial time. There was literally I believe 12 different legal issues. There was Charter Applications section 7, 8, 9, 10(b) rights to counsel, search and seizure. All sorts of issues with the Crown case. There was a refusal and impaired. We had various ways and means of attacking the refusal as well and it was one of the more interesting rights to counsel, if you find this sort of thing interesting, cases I’ve been involved in and it was very gratifying for the work we put into the case. Worked very well with the client. Prepared him to testify at great length and he did a good job and was ultimately believed by the Judge on the witness stand. The Judge was actually critical of the police in this case and I won’t get into that but there was a lot of criticism directed towards the police in terms of the way they conduct themselves and this is a case where at the outset of it I thought there was a less than 50/50 chance of winning but as things developed through the course of the trial it got better and better and that does happen often in cases. The odds change including going the other way but we are so gratified and I’m relieved the case is over because I’ve never worked harder on a DUI case in my career. Maybe I never will.
