• 15
  • January
    2012

Earlier this week, we began a discussion about the potential consequences of refusing to submit to a blood-alcohol test. Under Pennsylvania's implied consent law, drivers who refuse a law enforcement officer's request for a blood-alcohol test can face a one-year license suspension.

In 2009, one Philadelphia man learned that this law is sometimes too rigidly enforced. He and his girlfriend got into a car accident while driving home from a party. She was the designated driver, but a state trooper became convinced that he had been driving at the time of the accident. He refused to take a blood-alcohol test, and although the DUI charge was later dropped, the test refusal charge was not.

A few days after the accident, he was informed by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation that both his personal license and his commercial driver's license would be suspended for one year. This later resulted in the loss of his job as a truck driver.

The man has appealed twice, and has been unsuccessful both times. A judge in Dauphin County dismissed the appeal, ruling that the state trooper had reasonable grounds to demand a blood-alcohol test. Two Commonwealth Court judges agreed with the first ruling and ruled against the defendant during his second appeal.

A lawyer for PennDOT also put forth those arguments and added that whether or not the trooper made a mistake in identifying the driver of the car was ultimately irrelevant.

But one Commonwealth Court judge disagreed with the ruling. In a dissenting opinion, he wrote: "the purpose of the DUI laws is to prevent persons from operating motor vehicles under the influence of alcohol, not to punish passengers who refuse [blood-alcohol] testing."

Unfortunately, Pennsylvania's DUI laws can sometimes be unnecessarily rigid, leading to court rulings that create, what the man's defense attorney describes as, a "collision between the law and common sense." He adds: "PennDOT's blind insistence on the letter of the law ended up creating an injustice."

Source: PennLive.com, "Passenger's refusal to submit to blood-alcohol test triggers 'collision between law, common sense,' lawyer says," Matt Miller, Dec. 30, 2011