Doogue + George

Drink Driving Offences and Breach CCO

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This is a case that involves drink driving offences and Breach CCO.
Our client was charged with Breaching a Community Corrections Order, Drive Whilst License Disqualified, and Drive Unregistered Motor Vehicle. She has previous court appearances for drink driving and a relevant prior for driving whilst license disqualified. She received a Community Corrections Order (CCO) for these offences but she committed a further single offence of Drive disqualified while the CCO was still in force.
 

We acted on the client’s behalf at the Heidelberg Magistrates’ Court. The charges were:

Our client received fines for all offences and her car was impounded for 1 month.

Clearly, the fact that our client had breached her court order by further offending was of grave concern to the court. However the report prepared by Corrections had indicated that she had been otherwise compliant with her obligations under the CCO and had made terrific steps towards managing her addiction to alcohol.

Submissions on the plea were directed towards the positive comments made by her case workers about her participation in alcohol counselling and the good insight into her problematic alcohol consumption. The court’s attention was also drawn to the fact that the breaching offences did not involve a further instance from drink driving and could thus be contrasted with her bad history of drink driving.

Although our client had one relevant prior for Drive Disqualified, the court accepted that her otherwise excellent participation in the CCO militated against an escalation in penalty beyond a fine. Put simply, having regard to the circumstances of the offence and other matters personal to our client, the interests of justice would not be served by imposing a period of imprisonment or a further CCO.

For the drink driving offences and Breach CCO, the client was ultimately fined and was given a stay of 3 months for payment.
 
DISCLAIMER: This is a real case study of an actual case from our files. Details pertaining to the client have been changed to protect their privacy. The sentence imposed and the charge have not been altered. These case studies are published to demonstrate real outcomes and give an indication of possible tariffs in Court. We do not guarantee a similar case on these charges will get the same result. Please note that we post results at our discretion, therefore while many case studies are average results, others are notable for their exceptional outcomes. PUBLISHED 17/11/2017