First and foremost, Tampa DUI attorneys most often discuss a business purposes only or hardship license after a DUI suspension. As you know, if you’ve been reading our blog elsewhere, these licenses are eligible to be used to drive essentially only to work, school, and church. These licenses are issued to individuals whose Florida driver’s license is otherwise suspended. They are severe limitation on individuals, who are used to driving wherever and whenever they want.
A violation of a business purposes only license obviously occurs when someone drives somewhere other than work, school, or church. In our experience, this most often occurs when the individual is driving late at night. As you can imagine, if someone works day shift or goes to school during the day, it’s not difficult to explain to a law enforcement officer or the State Attorney’s Office that they were driving to or from work. Problems most often arise when individuals attend social events for work. For example, they attend an awards dinner and are on their way home at 9:00 p.m. and they are pulled over on the way home.
At Hackworth Law, we recommend those with a hardship license, carry some sort of proof and documentation from the events they are attending to provide law enforcement if they are stopped. For example, if someone works a revolving shift at some retail store, we recommend they keep a copy of their schedule with them at all times, so if they’re pulled over, they can quickly provide it to law enforcement. In some situations, we have had the owner or manager of our client’s business write letters on their company letter head to provide to law enforcement in the event they’re stopped at an odd time to explain the nature of their travels.
Especially in Pinellas County, prosecutors are very aggressive in these cases and often request some sort of jail time for these sorts of cases. The reasoning behind is that these individuals have already been charged with some sort of a traffic offense or a drug offense which required their license to be suspended and now they’re continuing to drive. This reasoning is also used by prosecutors throughout the Tampa area, but Assistant State Attorneys in Pinellas County are especially aggressive in these cases.
If you or someone you know has questions concerning an alleged violation of their hardship or business purposes only license, contact the Tampa DUI attorney of Hackworth Law for a free case consultation. We’ve handled many of these cases and can answer their questions concerning the specifics of their business purposes only license. We appreciate your time in looking at our blog and if you have further questions please don’t hesitate to use the “contact us now” tab in the upper right hand corner of our website thank you.