Why a "Sober Lifestyle" is Important in a Michigan Driver's License Restoration Appeal
Part of what "inspires" me to write any given article on this blog is often that a particular subject has come up in my dealings with Clients and/or those who call my Office. Recently, the subject of a "sober lifestyle" has come up in several contexts, and, given its importance and relevance to a License Appeal, I thought we might put this issue on the table for a closer examination.
The whole concept of a "sober lifestyle" is more or less an inherent and necessary, if not overlooked, component of Recovery and Sobriety, much like electricity is a necessary element of watching TV. It's there, but we don't spend much time thinking about it.
However, the State, particularly the Hearing Officers of the Secretary of State's Driver Assessment and Appeal Division (DAAD), do think about it. They look for it in any License Appeal that they decide.
In other License Restoration articles, I have examined the finer points of the issues involved in a License Appeal. Here, we can simply and summarily point out that the two main issues being evaluated by those Hearing Officers are whether the person filing the License Appeal can prove, by Clear and Convincing Evidence, that:
- Their alcohol problem is under control, and, (more importantly), that
- Their alcohol problem is LIKELY to remain under control.
As I noted above, the whole notion of a "sober lifestyle" is, more often than not, just an inherent part of a person's Sobriety. Once a person has maintained Sobriety for any length of time, the whole "sober lifestyle" thing becomes second nature, like brushing your teeth in the morning before you leave for the day. However, that "sober lifestyle" is also one of the strongest predictors of a person's likelihood to remain alcohol-free, or to use the State's terminology, that the person's alcohol problem "is likely to remain under control."
For the reader who has undergone the transformation from drinker to non-drinker, let's rewind a bit, to right before your last drink. On that score, the majority, although not all of those who get Sober, fix their last drink as the date of their last DUI Arrest. It really doesn't matter when it was; just think back to a few weeks before you "put the plug in the jug," to use a familiar phrase.
The majority of people fall into the first category: those who are unable, right out the gate, to obtain an out-of-state License. This article will focus on that smaller group in the second category: those who were first able to obtain, but were thereafter unable to renew, an out-of-state License.
After the Hearing has ended, I usually go over it with my Client, and do a sort of "post-game wrap up." Normally, this involves me explaining to the Client how and why I think we won.
While it may feel that way, the truth is that the Hearing, while important, is NOT the entirety of a License Appeal. It doesn't actually "come down to this." Instead, I try and help my Clients understand that the License Appeal Hearing is just the final step, and one of several such steps, before a decision is made. In this 6th part, we will examine the actual License Hearing, and what a person can expect to encounter, and why, at least if I am their Lawyer, this is really nothing to be nervous about.
In a very real way, the
In order to begin any kind of Driver's License Restoration Appeal, a person must file at least 2 things with the Secretary of State in Lansing:
If a person with a Revoked License is a Michigan Resident, the only way to "win back" their Michigan License is to go through the
There are 2 classes of Revocations:
In the first part of this article, I noted that more than half of
However, many years ago, that statement was much closer to the truth than it is now. If the reader had called
The Drug Screen (meaning Urine Test) section that follows is pretty clear. Despite the very clear request for a 10-panel drug test with at least 2 integrity variables, I have seen Evaluations that try and explain that the lab used by that particular Evaluator ONLY does 7-panel screens. That won't work. That's like going to a soda pop vending machine where the price of a Coke is $1.25 and only putting 4 quarters in. It doesn't fly.
Part of my
In this article, we will look at a specific, very common reason so many License Appeals are Denied; that the
The benefit to me, as a License Restoration Lawyer, is that once someone
When a person has left Michigan without having had their Driver's License
We'll pick up by looking at the 2 Hearing Officers generally considered the "toughest" of the group. I use the term "toughest" rather liberally here. In my experience, while these Hearing Officers are no doubt firm, they are also unquestionably fair in application of the Law to any case before them. Sometimes, especially if a person does not understand the subtleties of the law, and especially if they really and truly have been
As I have noted on my
In other words, you pay me once, and if that Appeal is Denied (as of this writing, by the way, I have won 184 out of the last 186 Appeals I have filed since I began keeping track back in June of 2009, giving me a first time " win rate" of 98.92%, meaning that I don't have very much experience NOT winning the first time), I will go back to the Michigan Secretary of State's Driver Assessment and Appeal Division (DAAD) until we win.
In another
To put it another way, there really aren't 3 issues here, there is only 1, kind of stated in 3 different ways. This transforms this seemingly complex Rule into something rather easy to understand
To be clear, the two issues with which we are concerned are numbers 2 (ii) and 3 (iii) under Michigan Secretary of State's Driver Assessment and Appeal Division (DAAD)
Yet it is also well known that there is no such thing as a "geographic cure" for an alcohol or substance abuse problem.
I point this out because any number of people call my Office about a License problem NOT related to Michigan. As a duly licensed
One situation that has reared its head, not surprisingly, occurs when I'm hired after a person has previously tried
For whatever reason, I had misheard Ann, and thought my Client was coming in a day or two before his Hearing.
From the outside, someone might just think that you file a License Appeal, and either win or lose. Like everything else about the whole
But winning isn't everything.
If the Evaluation is the foundation of a License Appeal, then the Letters of Support are its walls. In
In order to even get in the game, a person must be
The Hearing is more of an opportunity to confirm that the person portrayed in the evidence submitted is as good in real life as they seem on paper. As I tell my Clients beforehand,
The actual legal issue, as presented in
At some point, however, a person who formerly held, and then lost, a Michigan Driver's License tries to get one in their new State. And no matter how much time has passed, they find that Michigan has a "
At the Hearing which was the subject of another
To set things up, let's take a look at what needs to be
In several other articles, I have pointed out that I am only interested in representing someone in a License Appeal who is really and truly
In a
Recently, I have gone to some lengths to point out, in my various blog articles about
This is a fair and honest question, and it deserves an equally honest answer.
At its simplest, my first inquiry of a prospective Client is about their sobriety. Of course, it is necessary that they have not had a drink for at least a year, at the minimum, but I'm equally interested in finding out if their definition of "sobriety" means remaining abstinent. In other words, I need to know that a prospective Client has not only been alcohol-free for the last year or more, but also
Technically speaking, a person could file for a Hearing to just remove the ignition interlock, but at the time a person becomes eligible to file an Appeal to remove the unit, they also become eligible to Appeal for full Restoration of driving privileges. It goes without saying, then, that everyone files for full Restoration AND to have the interlock unit removed.
I don't really consider this any kind of oversight. My job is to win License Appeals, and I guarantee any Client that I will do just that, or their next round is FREE. Once a License Appeal has been won, the Secretary of State, for all of its shortcomings, is pretty good at explaining the steps involved in getting behind the wheel again.
If this was as easy as consistently dealing with low Defensiveness scores, then there would be no need for this discussion. However, a sizable chunk of people wind up with Defensiveness scores that, while not high enough to completely invalidate the Test scores, do call them into question. This leaves the test results in need of "interpretation." This means that the Evaluator has to arrive at a Diagnosis based upon not only the Test scores, but his or her experience, disposition and training as a Substance Abuse Counselor. It means, in short, that the Diagnosis is not completely determined by objective standards, but also contains an inescapable element of analytical subjectivity.
Interestingly, if not ironically, the Diagnosis section of the Substance Abuse Evaluation comes before the Testing Instruments section. This is a little bit of the-cart-before-the-horse in terms of layout, but beyond being a bit illogical, it does not change the fact that the Diagnosis is the result of whatever Alcohol Assessment is administered.
Because of their expertise, the Hearing Officers not only know how to read a Substance Abuse Evaluation and the specific Testing Instrument used in any case (and the ACTUAL Test a person took, and their actual Results sheet MUST be attached to the Substance Abuse Evaluation), but they also know how to look for anomalies between any such test, and the other information or conclusions presented or reached within the Substance Abuse Evaluation form itself. Moreover, they can "sniff out" an unusual test, or test result, or any information within the Substance Abuse Evaluation that seems inconsistent with a person having racked up 2 or more DUI's.
Many of my Clients have a keen interest in exploring every facet of the
The single best thing I can examine is that Driving Record, like a Doctor will examine a Patient's x-ray before determining what course of action to take. Having examined perhaps thousands of these Records, I can make short work of interpreting the information contained therein. In a matter of a minute or two, I can tell a person if they are
Sometimes, these individuals had a License in another state for a while, and this previously undisclosed "hold" comes up when they try to renew. Most of the time, however, and in large part due to what is know as the
This article will examine what's really at the core of making a
In the rather large collection of articles in the
This meant that a person with 3 DUI's within 10 years, whose License was Revoked for a minimum of 5 years, and who got caught driving during that period would have another 5 years of Revocation imposed upon them.
The primary rules regarding License Revocations are actually pretty simple: If a person has 2 alcohol-related (
So I want to be clear:
The answer hit me like a ton of bricks. How about backing up my claims with a guarantee? After all, if I'm as good as I claim, it really wouldn't be much of a risk for me to prove that, would it?
I have likewise noted that more than half of the Clients for whom I win back a
First, its important to note that the Secretary of State's Driver Assessment and Appeal Division (DAAD) requires, in every License Appeal, at least 3, but not more than 6 Letters of Support. This is a procedural requirement, not a suggestion.
As a general rule, once a person's License has been Revoked in Michigan, they will be unable to secure a License in any other State. This is because the
First, I believe that part of consistently
A few years ago, I was sitting in a Hearing with a Client who was an active AA participant. This man credited the program with not only bringing him to sobriety, but also saving his life. During the course of the Hearing, he was asked by the Hearing Officer to talk about a step or steps, other than the 1st, that were particularly important to him, and to explain why. I felt a surge of satisfaction run through me, as I knew this guy could step up and hit this one out of the park.
Perhaps part of that is because those who are actively involved in AA undergo a number of transformations as part of their growth within the program. One of those transformations involves becoming honest, both to themselves, and with others. The AA credo, "To thine own self be true" mandates a personal honesty that is an anathema to the practicing alcoholic. AA people want to tell their story because its both true, and because one of the ways they learn to get better is by sharing stories.
It is true that back more than 10 years ago, it at least seemed impossible to win a License Appeal without being involved in AA. This lingering impression is why many old-time AA attendees will tell anyone within earshot that the only way to get a License back is to keep coming to meetings. In fact, it was the case in my own office that, about 10 or more years before now, I wouldn't even consider accepting a License Appeal unless the person was actively involved in AA.
Within the parameters of the Legal profession, there isn't a lot of room for job satisfaction, either. Divorce Lawyers take their Clients at about the worst time in their lives. How much joy can someone get out of being part of a break-up? Estate Attorneys would be hard-pressed to get excited about the last Will they wrote up. Criminal Attorneys most often spend their time helping people clean up an extraordinarily unpleasant situation. I know about that, because its part of what I do.
The reason a License Appeal cannot be won while a person is on Probation, or Parole, is that the Secretary of State's Driver Assessment and Appeal Division (DAAD), the department that handles all License Appeals, deems anyone on Probation or Parole to be "living in a controlled environment." In pretty much every case where a person is on Parole or Probation, they are subject to drug and alcohol testing. Even if a person was required to test so many times per week for the first several months of Probation, and then allowed to terminate that scheduled testing, by virtue of the fact that they are still under the Court's jurisdiction in Probationary cases, and under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections in Parole cases, they are still under Order to not consume any drugs or alcohol, and are always subject to a random test requested by their Probation or Parole Officer.
I think some of the confusion about this stems from a lack of understanding about the
Of course, a lot of that has to do with very careful
If a person loses a regular License Appeal, they have to wait a full year to try again. They can file a
The term "License Restoration" applies when someone has had their License "
I mentioned earlier that the kinds of things that can result in a denial range from the easily fixable to the catastrophic. The examples above (in
In a recent article, I noted that I NEVER call
The biggest drawback to the "do-it-yourself" License Appeal is that whatever caused it to fail the first time will have to be addressed and fixed the second time around.
Many of those who previously used some Lawyer who said that he or she "does" License Appeals will have read many, if not most or all of my
In this series of articles, I will explore this in more detail than before, so that the reader can see why I really believe this, and why it works so well for me.
First, and foremost, a Substance Abuse Evaluation must be "legally adequate" in the eyes of the Secretary of State. Take a look at the
Part of the problem I've seen with Evaluations that I've not a hand in obtaining is the omission of specific, required information. This is sometimes compounded by the inclusion of lots of other, irrelevant information. We'll discuss this a bit more as we talk about the 2 threshold requirements for a Substance Abuse Evaluation in a License Appeal; that it be "legally adequate," and that it be "favorable."
It is not uncommon for me to be contacted by someone who asks something like "Do I really need a Lawyer to do this?" Or, "Can I do this on my own?"
































