The impaired driving attorneys at GRL Law win their fair share of DOT hearings each year.
Sometimes it takes awhile for the first win of the year to appear.
This year?
BANG! Day one.
On January 2, 2025 an administrative law judge found that despite being told he had until 1:30 a.m. to make telephone calls, our client was handcuffed to the bedrails of a hospital bed and unable to physically place any call.
You can even hear him attempting unsuccessfully to use voice activation to contact both family members and an attorney with his cell phone.
With two officers in the room.
Iowa Code section 804.20 allows law enforcement to place calls for those in custody.
Do you think police lifted a finger?
Not only did they fail to offer any assistance, the cut him off 30 minutes early from their own imposed deadline for calls.
And then deemed him to have refused consent to provide a urine sample.
No one is going to fault law enforcement from restraining drivers when appropriate, but this doesn’t relieve them of their duty to reasonably accommodate lawful requests.
The result? The refusal was rescinded from our client’s record and his driving privileges restored.
Here’s to the first dub of 2025 and many more to come.
