In Matter of Endara-Caicedo v. New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, the Court of Appeals recently addressed the circumstances in which a motorist will be subject to revocation of her driver’s license for refusing to submit to a chemical blood alcohol test. The majority held that a motorist cannot avoid revocation even when the request to submit to a test takes place more than two hours after the arrest even though a two hour temporal limitation does apply to the use of that refusal as evidence in a subsequent criminal proceeding.

As everyone hopefully knows, it is unlawful to operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. That is codified in §1192 of the Vehicle and Traffic Law (VTL). In order to facilitate the efforts of police officers to enforce impaired driving laws, §1194(2)(a) of the VTL provides that anyone who operates a motor vehicle in New York is deemed to have given consent to a chemical test of her breath, blood, urine or saliva to determine the alcohol and/or drug content of the individual’s blood. This “deemed consent” is subject to certain restrictions including that: (1) the test is administered at the direction of a police officer, (2) the police officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the individual was operating a motor vehicle in violation of VTL §1192, and (3) the test is administered within two hours of the individual’s arrest for the §1192 violation.

This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.

To view this content, please continue to their sites.

Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now

Why am I seeing this?

LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.

For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]