Court Opinion

ID: 9616324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:45:42.189916+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:57.331889
License: Public Domain

ELLETT, Justice
(dissenting):
A highway patrolman observed Mrs. Hyde making erratic maneuvers in the parking lot of a private hospital. He believed that she was under the influence of intoxicating liquor and called a city policeman who placed her under arrest for driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor.
She was requested to take a sobriety test but did not do so and the officer thereafter initiated proceedings to have her driving license revoked.
While Mrs. Hyde claimed that the officer had no authority to arrest her while she was on private property, her appeal does not raise that point. The thrust of the appeal is that “ . . . her attempts to protest the police action did not constitute the type of unequivocal rejection of the test necessary to excuse the officers from supplying further information to her.”
The defendant pursuant to statute1 revoked her driving permit and she brought an action in the district court to have the ruling of Mr. Dorius set aside. After a full hearing the trial court sustained the ruling of Mr. Dorius, the director of the Driver License Division, and this appeal is from that ruling.
It is to be noted that this is a civil matter and we should affirm the trial court if *454there is substantial competent evidence to sustain it.2
The trial judge found that she was properly arrested; that she was requested to take a chemical test under the implied consent law, and, that the response given by her actions, and her failure to affirmatively indicate either in word or action that she would take either of the two requested tests constituted a constructive refusal.
On appeal she contends that she could not have made a constructive refusal because she did not knowingly or intentionally refuse to take a test.
The evidence at trial showed that Mrs. Hyde was belligerent and would not listen as the officers explained to her the significance and result of a failure on her part to take a chemical test for sobriety, to wit, that she would lose her license to drive for one year. She told the officers that she did not have to listen, and that the officers did not know what they were talking about. The officers had her under arrest for over an hour and tried to get her to take either a blood test or a breath test. She never took or agreed to take either. She knew that the officer told her that because of the situation she could lose her driver’s license but claimed while on the witness stand that she thought it would be because she had been in an accident.
The evidence was such as to justify the court’s finding that the officers explained the implied consent law to Mrs. Hyde at least on two occasions and that the only response received from her was that she wanted to go home and that the officers could not arrest her on private property.
The ruling of the trial court should be affirmed.3
CROCKETT, J., concurs in the views expressed in the dissenting opinion of EL-LETT, J.

. Sec. 41-6-44.10 as found in Replacement Vol. 5A U.C.A.1953.

. Charlton v. Hackett, 11 Utah 2d 389, 360 P.2d 176; DeVas v. Noble, 13 Utah 2d 133, 369 P.2d 290.

. While the matter is not raised on appeal it is to be noted that the law prior to 1941 was to the effect that it was unlawful to drive a vehicle upon a public street or highway, and this old law was undoubtedly in Mrs. Hyde’s mind at the time. In 1941 the law was amended and now reads: “It is unlawful ... to drive or be in actual physical control of any vehicle within this state.” (Sec. 41-6-44, U.C.A.1953).