Court Opinion

ID: 9683763
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:36:27.805735+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:50.160957
License: Public Domain

RANDALL, J.
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result that the majority correctly traced the history of the “sixty-day rule.” And the majority correctly points out that if the driver does not get the hearing within 60 days the revocation is not automatically rescinded but instead the driver can file a petition for judicial review, ask for a stay, and the stay will then remain in force until the matter is resolved on the merits.
I suggest that one legislative change is needed. Under the current law, the driver has to retain an attorney (or try to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis appearing pro se), and that takes time, days, or weeks and the cost of time and money to make a routine motion for relief, to which the driver is entitled. That is to the prejudice of the driver, and it is because the state did not follow the direction of the law to conduct the hearing within 60 days. *225The importance of the 60 days cannot be denied. The Minnesota Supreme Court addressed delays by the state in Fedziuk v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety, 696 N.W.2d 340 (Minn.2005) and flat out declared the elimination of that requirement unconstitutional.
The legislative change needed is simple. The law should state that at midnight on the 60th day, the rescission is automatically stayed without any further action needed by the driver. If the driver is picked up one minute after midnight that morning his license will show rescinded but he is guaranteed a free “pass” when he does have to go to court.
With that provision in place, the state can take whatever time it thinks it needs to get its act in order, and the driver, although not likely to be happy about the initial rescission, now has the satisfaction of knowing he is perfectly legal, without more, after the passage of 60 days. This removes the affirmative burden on the driver to go into court and ask for what we know he is retroactively entitled to.
Put another way, why does the driver have the affirmative burden of seeking what is his? Why is the burden not on the state if it chooses to oppose the stay, to affirmatively have to go to the court on motion and bear the burden of persuasion as to why the rescission should not have been automatically lifted at midnight of the 60th day?