Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

Steve Palmer here coming at you with another riveting segment of DUI 360. Today, I wanna talk to you a little bit about driver's license suspensions. I get these questions all the time, both upstairs in my law practice and right here in the podcast. People get pulled over for, DUI or in Ohio, as we call it, OVI, and they suffer what we call in Ohio an immediate administrative license suspension. What the heck does that mean? That means that when you were pulled over, the police officer who pulled you over was wearing 2 different hats. The first hat was the one that he showed up with. A little I don't know how many corners a police officer's hat has, but you know what I'm talking about. He's a cop.

Steve Palmer [00:00:36]:

And his job there is to detect and enforce DUI laws. The second hat, that's an invisible one there. He is acting on behalf of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. We call that the BMV in Ohio. Lots of people call it the DMV in other states. But as an agent of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the police officer has to act on behalf of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. That means that if you refuse a breath test, the police officer is gonna suspend your license. He's gonna grab it and immediately suspend your license for 1 year.

Steve Palmer [00:01:07]:

That's called an administrative license suspension. Now what he's gonna tell you is that, well, you've got a better choice, sir or ma'am. You could actually take a chemical breath test, a blood test, or a urine test. And even if it's over the legal limit, your license suspension will only be 90 days. So again, acting on behalf of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the police officer is gonna grab your license and give you a piece of paper that says your license is suspended for 90 days. Alright. What the heck do you do about that? Well, here's what the police don't tell you, at least in Ohio on the side of the road. And by the way, look, I practice law in Ohio and some of this stuff may not apply in other states.

Steve Palmer [00:01:42]:

I if you got your own situation going on in another state, find a lawyer, find somebody competent, and I'm sure they'll be able to help you out. But generally speaking, in Ohio, when you have an administrative license suspension and you're on the side of the road, the police don't tell you a really important detail. If you go in and plead guilty with a 1 year driver's rights suspension because you refused the test, and you just say, judge, I don't have time for this nonsense. I plead guilty. Well, the judge is gonna impose its own suspension. The court is gonna impose its own suspension, and that's gonna be 1 year. That's right. So you got the 1 year suspension going in.

Steve Palmer [00:02:17]:

The court's gonna give you a 1 year suspension. It's not that you have 2 suspension. The first one smashes. The first one goes away. The the court suspension eliminates the one that the cop imposed. Now, here's the trick. If you go in with a 90 day suspension so you've taken the test, registered a result above the legal limit and you say, again, I yeah. This is this is a bunch of crap.

Steve Palmer [00:02:39]:

I'm not going to waste my time with this. I'm just going to plead guilty. I'm cool with it. Well, now the judge is going to give you a 1 year suspension. And that means your 90 day suspension just ballooned up to 1 year. And this is all legal semantics because what really happens is, it smashes, it goes away, and a new one takes over. So that is the trick about the administrative license suspensions, at least here in Ohio. And that is exactly what the police don't tell you.

Steve Palmer [00:03:05]:

Alright. So now you've got the suspension. Let's say, you're fighting your case and you don't have the court suspension yet. Don't worry. There's still some relief that you can get. Most judges, most courts here in Ohio anyway, will give you something called occupational driving privileges. They will give you limited privileges that let you drive most of the time at at a minimum to and from work, often to, pick up your kids, to go to child related activities, to go to medical appointments, to go to your alcohol counseling if that's appropriate in the case, and even some other stuff. So privileges now, at least in Ohio, are pretty broad.

Steve Palmer [00:03:41]:

If you've here's the other trick on the administrative side of things. If you've refused the test, in theory, you gotta wait 30 days before you can even ask for driving privileges. Sometimes we can get around that, and it gets a little more complicated. But that's the breakdown for now on driver's right suspensions. Is it complex? It is. I try to make everything simple. This is a harder one to make simple. If you've got further questions about it, you wanna know more about it, just shoot me shoot me a comment in the in the shoot me a comment in the in the what am I saying here? If you've got more questions about it, just leave us a comment.

Steve Palmer [00:04:17]:

I'll be happy to cover it, or you can check us out at lawyertalkpodcast.com. Or if you've got your own problem here in Ohio, you can check us out at Palmer Legal Defense, where I'm happy to deal with any problem that you have.