Court Opinion

ID: 9583495
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:39:14.249081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:02.841378
License: Public Domain

PARKER, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The supreme court, in Friedman v. Commissioner of Pub. Safety, 473 N.W.2d 828, 832-34 (Minn.1991), held that a constitutional right to counsel attaches when one must decide whether to submit to testing, but the court neither held the statutory post-testing right superfluous nor held it inconsistent with the constitutional right.
No inherent inconsistency exists in having a constitutional pretesting right to counsel as well as a statutory post-testing right. They serve different purposes; an individual may not perceive a need to consult an attorney until after receiving the test results. Moreover, one may well need an attorney to carry out the right to a second test.
Even if it were shown that the purpose behind the statutory post-testing right to counsel ceased to exist after Friedman, it is not within this court’s province to ignore the clear, mandatory directive of Minn.Stat. § 169.123, subd. 2(b)(6) (1991), which provides for a right to consult an attorney after testing. The legislature has given us a specific rule applicable: “A law shall not be deemed repealed because the reason for its passage no longer exists.” Minn.Stat. § 645.40 (1990).
The majority quote the Przymus decision for the proposition that
Friedman does not require that an officer advise a driver of the right to counsel before testing and advise the driver of the same right once again after testing.
Przymus v. Commissioner of Pub. Safety, 488 N.W.2d 829 (Minn.App.1992), pet. for rev. denied (Minn. Sept. 15, 1992). While that is doubtless true, the statute still required the driver to be advised (whenever the advisory was given) that he had, after submitting to testing, a right to consult counsel about additional testing — at least until the legislature deleted the phrase. While the legislature has made the change, it is its exclusive authority to do so, there being no constitutional principle asserted in this case. Przymus does not control here, since it did not reach the narrow issue resulting from the Friedman court’s finding of a constitutionally mandated pretesting right to counsel not satisfied by the legislatively mandated post-testing right.
The Commissioner arrogated unto himself the authority to cobble together an advisory which would recognize the constitutional principle established in Friedman but which ignored the subsisting statutory language — anticipating the amendment adopted some time later. The trial court *281observed that, in the interim, drivers had a right to be advised of both the constitutional right and the statutory right to counsel. I would affirm.