Word: drunks
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...worth $8.1 million. A few hours after the sale was completed, Barnhart, 40, accompanied by a yacht salesman, drove his red Ferrari off the road in Los Gatos, Calif., and was killed. An autopsy showed that he was legally drunk at the time of the accident...
...proliferation of lawyers who take on drunken-driving cases is the predictable result of a national crusade to break the connection between alcohol and death on the highways. That movement has been gathering momentum since 1980, when the first branch of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) was formed in California. MADD and its many allies have just had their best year. In 1983, 40 states toughened their drunken-driving statutes. At least nine passed laws mandating jail terms for second offenders; 39 states now have such laws. Eight states, most recently Wisconsin, passed laws raising their drinking ages...
...competent defense. Even a simple case now costs a client $500 to $1,500 in most parts of the country. As cases get more complicated, fees inevitably rise. Francis Moore, a New Jersey attorney whose five-lawyer firm handles between 1,000 and 1,500 drunk-driving cases a year, demands a retainer of $3,000 for accused third offenders...
...jail, because we pursue every single avenue." The most common strategies: attack the credibility and procedures of the police or their scientific evidence, especially the breath-testing equipment used to measure blood alcohol content. In most states today, a measurement of .10% is considered proof that a driver is drunk. Defense attorneys across the country have challenged the reliability of breath-analysis equipment, and they have had some success. Starting in 1982, several courts found that police radio equipment could at times affect the accuracy of some models of Smith & Wesson's Breathalyzer. That legal argument lost part...
...accurate." That kind of advice infuriates the anti-drunken-driving activists. "Drunk driving is a multimillion-dollar business for lawyers," says an angry Doris Aiken, founder of Remove Intoxicated Drivers (RID). She has some advice of her own for the new legion of legal specialists. "The best thing a lawyer can do for the drunk driver," she says, "is to tell him to face the music, and not go after a big fee to get him off." - By Michael S. Serrill...