I want to talk to you today about the “post driving consumption” defence. You’ve retained our law firm, you come to see me, and you tell me “Mike, look, I was driving, and you and I got home, and then it was only after I got home that I started drinking. So that’s “post driving consumption.” The police showed up at my door and they arrested me. They gave me a breath sample and I eventually blew say one ten (110) at the police station. The post driving consumption defence is available for you to defend yourself in this situation. You have to show that there was drinking, obviously, after you seized operation of your motor vehicle. You have to show that the drinking pattern read to the ultimate reading, say you blew one-ten (110) so had four drinks, so you hired a toxicologist, that toxicologist can testify, yes, an hour later that would rise to one-ten at the police station, and the third criteria is very important, you have to show that there was no reasonable expectation, that you knew that you would have to provide a breath sample. Let me give you an example, let’s say you are in a motor-vehicle, accident, and you flee the scene and go home and you heard that, you know, drinking after driving is going to lead to a defence well you might have a hard time showing there’s no reasonable expectations, because you were fleeing and you kind of knew that the police might show up at your home, at least in the back of your mind. On the other hand, if you were just driving along and some citizen report that you were doing some eradicate driving, and you weren’t drinking and you went home and had a drink, well, there’s no reasonable expectation. You didn’t know that the police were going to show up at your home. That defence still works, parliament added that third criteria about the expectation for those people who in the past were trying to obstruct justice essentially, by downing a bunch of drinks they heard that from a friend “hey go home and down a bunch of drinks, after you get into an accident, so, but the defence still works. It requires hiring a toxicologist, a good lawyer who knows what they are doing, and you can often win that type of case your fact pattern fits those three criteria.
