Court overrules decision to throw out P-plater’s drink-driving charge

A P-plater who blew 0.009 could still face prosecution for drink-driving after the Supreme Court overturned a decision to dismiss the charge ‘as the law does not concern itself with trifles’.

A P-PLATER who blew 0.009 could still face prosecution for drink-driving after the Supreme Court overturned a decision to dismiss the charge “as the law does not concern itself with trifles”.

Liam Andrew Kruger was set to plead guilty in the Darwin Local Court to being a provisional driver with alcohol in his breath and failing to properly display his P plates in November 2019.

But the presiding judge threw the first charge out, saying the breathalyser reading was equivalent to less than half of one standard drink.

“The respondent’s blood alcohol content of 0.009 per cent was so low as to be incapable of having any practical impact upon his capacity to drive a motor vehicle,” the court ruled.

“As the law does not concern itself with trifles, the prosecution had failed to make out all necessary elements of the offence.”

The office of the Director of Public Prosecutions appealed the judgement to the Supreme Court and last week Chief Justice Michael Grant ruled the lower court’s analysis was “clearly wrong”.

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“The legislation provides expressly that it is unnecessary to show that a person’s ability to drive a motor vehicle is impaired in order to establish an offence of driving with alcohol in the breath or blood,” he said.

Chief Justice Grant said while the legislation was unambiguous, making the Local Court’s analysis of the intentions of its drafters unnecessary, it was clear parliament meant for it to include any amount of alcohol.

“Even if such an inquiry had been permitted or required, the second reading speech dealing with the offence as originally enacted provided that the zero alcohol requirement served a number of road safety purposes — including to ‘separate new drivers from drinking’,” he said.

“Once it had been established that there was alcohol in the respondent’s breath, the legislative purpose and intention was not concerned with the practical impact on the respondent’s capacity to drive a motor vehicle at that time.”

Chief Justice Grant said the principle that courts should not concern themselves with trifling matters “cannot be deployed to displace the operation and plain meaning of the words of a statutory instrument”.

“That is particularly so where the legislation adopts a quantitative standard such as ‘zero alcohol’,” he said.

“While the relatively low level of alcohol present in the respondent’s breath on this occasion may have been relevant to the question of penalty, it could not absolve him from criminal responsibility.”

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The ruling leaves the decision of whether to proceed with the charge in the hands of the office of Director of Public Prosecution.

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