Tony Raven wrote:
> Stevie D wrote on 10/08/2006 22:55 +0100:
> > Rob Oldfield wrote:
> >
> >> "She [the judge] did, however, note that there was no alcohol involved
> >> and that Mr. Martin 'did not drive complainant down and back over him
> >> again' as had happened in other similar cases."
> >
> > So it's fine to run over someone, as long as you only run them over
> > once?
> >
> North American lawyers expect people to reverse back over them if they
> get run over ;-)
> --
> Tony
There were some curious statements made by both the judge and the
defence. I suppose you'd expect them from counsel for the defence, eg,
"this was at the low end of the scale of bad driving", but I don't know
what caused the judge to say what he said. Maybe he has been the victim
of such behaviour.
One thing not reported was that the driver's son unintentially blurted
out in court that his father laughed all the way home. Obviously
defence counsel didn't brief him on keeping his mouth shut.
We have another case coming up soon involving a driver that did indeed
run over the bike of a cyclist that the latter had left it in front of
a car in order to go talk to the irate driver. Fortunately we have a
pretty well informed local police department who take such incidents
very seriously. Our traffic laws accord the same rights to cyclists
that motor vehicle drivers have so the Telford case could neverend up
in court. This is not true everywhere in North America. Police
harassment occurs frequently in other jurisdictions and laws may be
different.
