After nine long months of litigation, I am pleased to announce that my client successfully avoided a jury trial and succeeded in obtaining the result that he wanted. DRM was charged with leaving the scene of a property damage accident (a six point offense), operating while intoxicated, and possession of marijuana. We revoked consent to test blood with Michigan State Police and had lengthy motion hearings regarding that issue as well as whether a person could be charged with leaving the scene of a property damage accident where no damage occurred. We lost on both motions but preserved the issues for appeal. While the case was pending, DRM was able to obtain clear evidence that he was entitled to a Section 8 defense under the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act. I filed a motion to permit that defense at trial, but medical records that the hospital promised several months ago were still being proceed on the date of our motion hearing. (This had me extremely worried!) We were scheduled for jury trial in little over a week, but the prosecutor and I were able to get the case resolved at our final settlement conference. End result? OWI dismissed. LSPDA reduced to failure to report accident (a non-reportable offense that does not abstract). The marijuana charge was taken under 7411 status, and the client took a plea to improper passing, a three point civil infraction. Translating this from legalese into English, this means that the public record will show only one single infraction on his record: improper passing. Everything else is dismissed and/or results in no record. This was a tremendous victory, even though we were geared up for trial.
The trial court judge said, "This would have been a very interesting trial." I responded saying, "but it's always better to avoid an interesting trial." And this resolution was simply too good to pass up!