Supremes Quickly Affirm License Suspensions

In a quick and decisive opinion, the Connecticut Supreme Court found that there was sufficient evidence to suspended the licenses of two separate drivers. Remember in Connecticut that a license suspension results from a conviction in criminal court. But also, the DMV suspends your license unless you ask for and win a hearing before that agency.

Both Stash and Marsh lost their respective DMV hearings and appealed to court. Their argument, in essence, was that since both drivers underwent blood alcohol tests, and the statute is designed for breath tests, there was no evidence to show they were driving with an elevated blood alcohol content.

Since blood test results need to be mathematically converted so they can be compared to breath results, and no evidence was before the DMV as to how this was done, the DMV had no factual basis to suspend their licenses.

The Supreme Court did not make much of a statement about the facts and merely endorsed the trial court's recitation of them. Regardless, we are without the benefit of much analysis by the Supreme Court about this case. The statute is intended to be used with breath tests. It would have been nice to have the Supreme Court's view on how it squared this fact with the inherent inaccuracies of blood tests.