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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  















Road Traffic - From: 1990 To: 1990

This page lists 9 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.

 
Regina v Liverpool Stipendiary Magistrates ex parte Ellison [1990] RTR 220
1990
QBD
Bingham LJ, Leggatt J
Road Traffic, Criminal Procedure
Bingham LJ said: "If any criminal court at any time has cause to suspect that a prosecutor may be manipulating or using the procedures of the court in order to oppress or unfairly to prejudice a defendant before the court, I have no doubt that it is the duty of the court to inquire into the situation and ensure that its procedure is not being so abused. Usually no doubt such inquiry will be prompted by a complaint on the part of the defendant. But the duty of the court in my view exists even in the absence of a complaint."
Leggatt J said: "Where a prosecutor applies to withdraw one charge and substitute another, which on the face of it is less serious, the magistrates' court will ordinarily have no reason to object, and indeed no ground for doing so, provided that their powers of sentence remain sufficient. Here it is said that the stipendiary magistrate should have required the prosecutor to proceed on the charge of attempted theft instead of the charge of interfering with a motor vehicle, because the effect of the substitution was, as it is put, to deprive the defendant of his right to trial by jury. It is therefore said to have constituted an abuse of process, notwithstanding that the applicant was thereby rendered vulnerable to a less severe maximum punishment.
The key to the determination of this case appears to me to be that a defendant arraigned in a magistrates' court has in truth no absolute right to trial by jury. Whether he has such a right depends on the charge which is preferred against him. Until the more serious charge . . was withdrawn the applicant enjoyed such a prospective right, but in relation to the less serious charge he did not. To speak of depriving the applicant of his right to trial by jury is . . only a pejorative way of making the point that upon reduction of the charge he ceased to be confronted by a charge sufficiently serious to warrant a right to trial by jury. In the absence of bad faith on the part of the prosecutor or of unfairness or prejudice to the accused, the prosecutor's motive in making the substitution was irrelevant. The question is whether the substitution is in this sense a proper one."
and "Whilst it is no doubt preferable that the charge ultimately made against a defendant should be correct in the first place that cannot always occur."
1 Citers


 
Denny v Director of Public Prosecutions [1990] RTR 417
1990
QBD

Road Traffic
The appellant had been stopped, taken to a police station and required to provide two specimens of breath for analysis. After he provided the second, the device indicated that it was not functioning normally, so the officer could not say that he had been provided by the defendant with two specimens of breath which had been analysed reliably, if at all. He was then taken to another police station where he provided two further specimens of breath which revealed that the level of alcohol was in excess of the prescribed limit. He appealed on the ground that he could not be lawfully required to provide two further specimens of breath and should instead have been required to provide a sample of blood or urine. Held: The appeal was dismissed. Since the material words in section 8(1)(a) were "to provide two specimens of breath for analysis", there was no such provision of specimens unless the result of the motorist blowing properly into the device, and it working properly so as to receive and analyse the specimens and record the result, was the provision of two valid breath specimens. Accordingly, the officer was entitled to require the provision of two further specimens and was not limited to the alternative course of requiring the provision of blood or urine specimens.
Road Traffic Act 1972 8(1)(a)
1 Citers


 
Garner v Director of Public Prosecutions [1990] RTR 208
1990

Stocker LJ, Roch LJ
Road Traffic
The court considered the admissibility of evidence produced by a prescribed device for measuring breath alcohol levels. Held: The record (the printout from a Lion Intoximeter device) was admissible either under the statutory provision without the necessity of calling any witness to produce it or as real evidence, if produced by someone who was able to identify the exhibit and link it to the case against the defendant.
Stocker LJ said: "The question can be put in this form? Was the printout admissible? The argument that it was not depends upon the proposition that is admissibility arises solely from the terms of section 10(3) of the Act of 1972. For my part, I do not agree that such admissibility does arise solely through the terms of that section. In my view it was, quite apart from that section, an admissible document at common law as representing real evidence."
Roch LJ: "As real evidence, such a printout can be proved, as any other real evidence can be proved, namely by being produced as an exhibit by a witness who can identify what the exhibit is and link it to the case against a defendant. Once the exhibit is properly proved in that way it speaks for itself."
Road Traffic Act 1972 10
1 Citers


 
Boss v Measures [1990] RTR 26
1990
QBD
Woolf LJ
Road Traffic
The defendant was prosecuted for having failed to provide information on a form when he had responded by telephone.
1 Citers


 
Paterson v Director of Public Prosecutions [1990] RTR 329
1990


Road Traffic

1 Citers



 
 Pitts v The Personal Representatives of Mark James Hunt (Deceased) and Another; CA 1990 - [1991] 1 QB 24; [1990] 3 All ER 344; [1990] EWCA Civ 17
 
Mallard v Director of Public Prosecutions [1990] 91 Crim App R 108
1990


Road Traffic

Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 15
1 Citers


 
Devlin v Hall (1990) RTR 320
1990


Road Traffic

1 Citers



 
 Regina v Forest of Dean Justices ex parte Farley; CACD 1990 - [1990] RTR 228
 
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