In the legal world, deadlines are deadlines are deadlines (almost always). This is especially true when it comes to filing an implied consent petition which is usually filed in conjunction with a DUI case and today, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reiterated this message while it applied the 30 day hard-and-fast deadline to unique case:
Anderson v. Commissioner (CT APPS, 05-09-2016, A15-1378) involves a driver who was charged with DWI in 2006 and 2008, but was, at that time, found incompetent to proceed at trial. Yet, even though his criminal case did not proceed, his license was revoked for failure to test (part of a bigger issue now being reviewed by the United States Supreme Court. (*NOTE: license revocations are considered “aggravating factors” for purposes of criminal DUI cases.)
Then, in 2012, the driver was charged with felony DWI and test refusal (the charge was enhanced to a felony because of the previous revocations, which, again, are “aggravating factors”). When the driver then filed an implied consent petition to challenge the revocations of his license in 2015 (to avoid the enhanced felony charge), the trial court denied the challenge because the petition must be submitted within a 30 day deadline.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court, and stated that the 30 day deadline is absolute in this instance, and therefore, the court did not have jurisdiction to accept the license challenge.
If you have lost your license and are looking to challenge your revocation, do not wait to call a criminal defense attorney. Remember: deadlines are deadlines are deadlines (almost always).