Travis J. Tormey recently defended a client against a first offense DWI violation in Guttenberg Municipal Court. The client had reportedly registered a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .13 percent. As a result, the client faced significant DWI penalties, including: suspension of his driver’s license for a period of 1 year, heavy fines, mandatory alcohol education classes at the Intoxicated Driver Resource Center (IDRC), and up to 30 days in the local county jail.

When the client called the Tormey Law Firm, Mr. Tormey immediately got to work defending the client against the DUI charges. Mr. Tormey reviewed the discovery evidence and determined that the breath test reading should not be admissible in court. The two breath samples provided by the client were “outside tolerance,” which means that they were not close enough in nature. In other words, the disparity between the two breath test readings suggested that the breath machine was not working properly. In accordance with the State v. Chun decision, the breath test samples should have been tossed out in court.

Additionally, the client was dealing with chronic feet issues at the time of the DWI traffic stop. In fact, the client had been medically discharged from the armed services because of his health issues. Clearly the client should not have been subject to field sobriety testing on the night of his DWI incident. Mr. Tormey offered testimony from the firm’s DWI expert, a retired NJ State Trooper, who declared that the client’s medical issues would have prevented him from performing the field sobriety tests.

As a result of Mr. Tormey’s challenges to the breath test reading and the field sobriety testing, the municipal court judge dismissed the DWI charges. Our client avoided a serious DWI conviction and instead received a mere 30-day suspension of his driver’s license on a careless driving citation.