“Help!!! I Am Freaking Out!”

Hello everyone.

I feel as if I've gone through hell in the past 48 hours.. To give everyone a quick rundown, in October I got pulled over in Michigan for a DUI.. After several visits back to Michigan I ended up being convicted of this offense and received a ton of fines and a year probation as punishment. After my final trip to court in Michigan, I crossed back into Canada and had been driving for only approximately 10 minutes when I was then pulled over by an OPP cruiser.

The officer pulled me over because he had ran my plates and discovered I had been driving with a suspended license. I freaked out when he told me this as I had NO CLUE that my license had been suspended by the MTO!! During the entirety of battling my DUI in Michigan I had NEVER received anything from the MTO, no mail, no phone call, NOTHING to advise me my license would be suspended. The courts in Michigan even clearly stated that they were unaware if there would be any repercussions in Ontario and if so what they might be. So my license was seized and now I have to go to court to battle a Driving with a suspended license charge I now have..

I find this all ridiculous as I was never notified at all from my government to advise me of my license being suspended! I obviously wouldn't have drove to Michigan for my final court appearance having known this!

I'm now petrified that this is going to ruin my life as not only did my DUI follow me back to Ontario, but if I'm convicted of driving with a suspended license, then I also violate my probation in Michigan!!!

Please, if anyone can shed some light on if I have a case for myself here I would greatly appreciate it. I've never been in trouble with the law and am just so scared. How can I possibly get in trouble for driving with a suspended license when I had NO CLUE my license was suspended!

I believe that Michigan and New York are the two states that have reciprocal agreements with Ontario with regards to DUI.

So yes a DUI in Michigan will be reported to Ontario after you are convicted and it will affect your drivers license and your insurance will go up a lot.

However I do not think the systems are efficient enough for your license to be suspended right after you got convicted. So is there more to the story? How long from when you were convicted in Michigan to when you were pulled over in Ontario?

Is it possible there is another reason your license had been suspended other than the DUI? I would go to MTO office and ask for specifics of when your license was suspended and why.

But if your licence was suspended then surely you were driving in Michigan immediately after the sentence. I think there will be little sympathy and your job will have to be that you just exercised poor judgement as opposed to a flagrant disregard for the law.

There's a recipicol agreement in place between Ontario and Michigan. In that agreement, here's a list of offenses that will follow you over the border. Ontario will apply that conviction to your record here and add whatever demerit points that charge would have netted you in Ontario. Not all offenses are in the agreement and not all charges that would get you suspended in one place will have you suspended in another.

For that, there's another list of offenses committed in either Michigan or New York that will have your license automatically suspended in Ontario (Reciprocal Suspension of Driver's Licence). The list can be found here.

It was on December the 9th that I made my plea in Michigan pleading guilty to the offense. When I was pulled over (January 13th 2016) the office had informed me that my license had been suspended as per the DUI in Michigan and as of December 9th. This tells me the MTO was notified immediately of my plea.

This also tells me that since December 9th, up until this very day, absolutely NO contact had been made from the Ministry to me to inform me of this. That's why I had NO CLUE my license was suspended! I'm so upset that I was not notified of this suspension at all, or else of course I wouldn't have been driving!

Does anyone know the rules or expectations of the Ministry in regards to how they're suppose to notify people of licens

Notification is done by mail to the address listed on your drivers licence. After seven days the suspension is deemed served. There is no phone call, no registered letter.

Which, I have to say, is pretty miserable. At least it should be a registered letter.

They use to be registered letters but people would scribble their names when signing, if the name was illegible, then the courts would not convict...You are right, it is miserable, what if you were away on vacation for a couple of weeks, you drive home from the airport and get pulled over and find out you are "deemed served" while you were out of the country and not getting your mail...harsh...

At the very least youll want to request disclosure and review the case against you. Driving while under suspension is NOT an absolute liability offence so you may have a legal argument regarding being unaware of the Provincial suspension. If youre especially concerned about the possible probation violation, it may be worth hiring a paralegal, etc. to review your case. You can also speak to the Crown and see if theyre willing to offer you a plea deal. For a first offence theyll sometimes offer a plea to the offence of driving without a licence, which carries a fine but no additional suspension, etc.

It is very miserable..

Again, I had NO idea that my license was suspended and now I have all this *EDIT* on my plate to deal with. Im so upset and am freaking out at the possibility of the court not believing me and getting in trouble for something I simply didn't know I was doing wrong!