R v Gott

[2001] QCA 548

[2001] QCA 548

COURT OF APPEAL

McPHERSON JA
DAVIES JA
THOMAS JA

CA No 248 of 2001

THE QUEEN

v.

DENNIS ALAN GOTT  (Applicant)

BRISBANE

..DATE 29/11/2001

JUDGMENT

McPHERSON JA:  The applicant for leave to appeal against sentence is Dennis Alan Gott.  He was convicted on a plea of guilty in the District Court at Townsville of one count of dangerously interfering in the operation of a motor vehicle. He was sentenced to imprisonment for 12 months wholly suspended with an operational period of three years.   He was also disqualified from holding or obtaining a driver's licence for 12 months.  His complaint on this application for leave to appeal against sentence is limited to that disqualification.

The circumstances of the offence are that on 5 August 2000 the applicant, together with some 30 or so other passengers, was in a bus travelling from Townsville to Rockhampton on the Pacific Highway.  He was intoxicated and was seated behind the driver.  At some stage in the journey he fell asleep and awoke quite disoriented.  He asked the driver, "Where are we going?"  The driver made some answer which the applicant apparently misunderstood and he became agitated or alarmed. 

Thinking he was being taken away from where he was going he grabbed the driver by the neck and squeezed it.  The driver said that he felt the applicant's fingers at his throat and his thumbs pushing down on the back of his neck.  He lost control of the bus, which was travelling at about 100 kilometres an hour at the time, with a result that it skewed on to the incorrect side of the road.  Fortunately, there was no oncoming traffic and the driver was able to stop the bus before it left the road.

After bringing the bus back on to the correct side of the road the driver pushed the applicant out of the bus.  The police were called, when it was found that the applicant had been drinking a strong mixture of Scotch and coke.  He was still very intoxicated and having trouble with standing on his own and with his speech.  When interviewed by the police the applicant could not recall the incident. 

His personal circumstances are that he was 57 at the time of the offence and in so far as he had a criminal record at all it consisted of minor and, for these purposes, irrelevant offences.

The application for leave to appeal is confined to the element of disqualification from holding a driver's licence that purported, I suppose, to be imposed under s 187(1) of the Penalties and Sentences Act read with s 86(3) of the Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act 1995.

The scope of s 187(1) was considered by this Court in R v. Nhu Ly [1996] 1 QdR 543; but, on any view of it the applicant was not within the ambit of that provision. He was not himself driving the vehicle. So much is conceded by Mr Byrne on behalf of the Crown.

The application and appeal against sentence should therefore be allowed, and the sentence varied by omitting the order for disqualification from holding or obtaining a driver's licence.

DAVIES JA:  I agree.

THOMAS JA:  I agree.

McPHERSON JA:  The order will be as I have stated it.

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