Oregon Injury Lawyer Blog
Chalk one up for Orange County, California in the quest for innovative ways to combat drunk driving. According to a recent article in the Orange County Register a recent student assembly in the San Clemente High School gym featured “an actual court session and sentencing of a DUI defendant.”
The paper reports that the County Superior Court session was moved to the school for part of one day as a way of emphasizing the seriousness of drunk driving and its consequences. Placing the session in the school allows anti-drunk driving activists to demonstrate this directly to teens – a group who have traditionally both been at extremely high risk for drunk driving injuries and fatalities while also being unusually difficult to reach in effective ways.
A session later in the day at the same school featured “an Orange County deputy district attorney (discussing) family consequences from a teen DUI or DUI-related crash.”
On one level the court session and later panel discussion may seem like a bit of a stunt, but with drunk driving continuing to be an epidemic here in Oregon and elsewhere around the country our neighbors to the south ought to be applauded for their innovative attempt to get the message out.
Here in Portland it is also important that bar owners and shops selling alcohol understand that the Oregon dram shop laws can make them liable for the damage caused by an Oregon drunk driver, above and beyond the potential licensing consequences of selling to minors. A responsible Oregon drunk driving attorney can assist victims and their families in the difficult process of coping with the consequences of an Oregon teen drunk driving crash, helping to explain the legal system and its intricacies and to chart a family’s path toward achieving justice in our courts.
Orange County Register: Teen-DUI Seminar to include court session at high school
