The Court of Appeal allowed Karen Cohalan’s appeal against the disqualification aspect of her sentence, replacing a four-year period with an ancillary disqualification of two years and five months, the time she had already spent off the road.
In an ex tempore judgment delivered on 8 June 2023, the court said the lower court had imposed four years because it mistakenly believed that was a mandatory minimum consequential disqualification.
The appeal court said some ancillary disqualification was appropriate. It concluded that Cohalan’s two years and five months off the road met the circumstances of the case and substituted that period, running from the same commencement date as the original four-year disqualification.
The court said the ancillary disqualification had therefore been satisfied and Cohalan was entitled to apply immediately to get her licence back. The judgment does not state that a licence was restored, nor does the extract give details of the underlying offence or any other part of the sentence.