In some cases motor vehicle accidents happen because someone has been drinking, sometimes they are just accidents. Our client was involved in an accident at 2:05 early on a Sunday morning on a main road in Sun Prairie.  The client’s vehicle struck another vehicle as he was driving home.  Client was found behind the wheel, officers described him as having bloodshot eyes, an odor of intoxicants coming from his breath and the client had admitted to consuming alcohol.  There were witnesses who also informed police that after the accident, the client put something in a dumpster which was near the accident scene.  Officers recovered a beer bottle which the client admitted was his.

The client had informed law enforcement that he was using his phone at the time of the accident and was not intoxicated.  Police had the client do field sobriety tests and he allegedly failed 2 of the 3 tests. 

Client was issued multiple tickets including OWI, Inattentive Driving and Open Intoxicants in the Vehicle.  After having a pretrial conference with the prosecutor, the lawyers at Chirafisi & Verhoff were able to convince him that the accident did in fact occur as the result of the clients use of his phone and not being impaired.  Further, because the government couldn’t prove that the client had been drinking in the vehicle, the open intoxicant charge had to be dismissed as well.

At the end of the day the client had to pay a small fine on an inattentive driving ticket while the OWI and Open Intoxicant tickets were both dismissed.