Our Chicago DUI Lawyers have learned that a bill that would have outlawed open alcohol in vehicles in Connecticut has been shelved. Illinois has had such a law on the books for quite some time, however Connecticut has no such law, and likely will not put an “open container” law into place until next legislative session.

Full story below:
‘Open Container’ Ban Stalls In House

By JON LENDER | The Hartford Courant
With a seemingly innocuous temporary postponement of action, the House of Representatives abruptly dealt a potentially fatal blow this afternoon to a bill that would have made it illegal for anyone to have an open container of an alcoholic beverage in a vehicle on Connecticut roads.

The bill had won approval last week in the Senate, and proponents in the House thought this morning that they had the votes to pass it and send it to Gov. M. Jodi Rell for her signature.

But as the House’s debate entered its third hour at about 2:30 this afternoon, some legislators began hammering on the fact that the bill would make only drivers — not passengers who are drinking — subject to tickets beginning at $90 for the first offense and rising to $500 for the third.

That penalizes the “Good Samaritan” designated driver who volunteers to stay sober so he or she can drive his beer-drinking friends and keep them safe, said opponents including Rep. Peter Tercyak, D- New Britain.
“We have a bill here whose stated purpose is to punish sober drivers,” Tercyak said.

As the debate picked up, others agreed — including Deputy Speaker Robert Godfrey, D- Danbury, who said the bill was so badly drafted, with so many compromises and exclusions, that it made a “better press release” than legitimate legislation. When it was apparent support was eroding and the deliberations threatened to eat up a big chunk of the second-to-last day of the 2009 regular legislative session, House Majority Leader Denise Merrill, D-Mansfield, arose to request that debate on the bill be postponed temporarily.

Amid immediate consternation following that indefinite postponement, there was talk of fixing the offending provision. But while legislative leaders talked about quick-fix remedies, the main House proponent of the bill, Rep. Tom Reynolds, D-Ledyard, was talking to reporters outside the House chamber. He said simply: “the bill’s dead.”

Reynolds said no language could be drafted at this late stage in the legislative session — with adjournment scheduled at midnight Wednesday — to address the “philosophical differences” of opponents, who he said appeared willing to “filibuster” and eat up much of the 33 or so remaining hours in the House.
Asked if he planned to bring the bill up again next year, he did not answer and said he had other bills to attend to before midnight Wednesday. He said he felt badly for families of victims of drunken drivers who were sitting in the House gallery above — “people who lost children to drunk drivers.”

Earlier in the day, the bill seemed to be doing all right in the debate — with proponents saying it would be a big step forward despite a number of compromises that were believed necessary to win its passage this year. Last year, the open-container bill failed after black and Latino legislators voiced fears that it would inordinately hit racial minorities.

A major concern was that if an open-container violation were a “primary” cause for a police officer to pull over a car, it could bring an increase in “racial profiling” — that is, stopping drivers at least partly on the basis of their race, not the merits of the situation.

A compromise was reached to meet that objection: Under the law, an open-container violation is only a “secondary” cause for an officer to stop a vehicle and cannot be the only, or “primary,” trigger for the stop of the vehicle. There would have had to be some other violation as the cause of the traffic stop, such as speeding or some other moving violation, or defective equipment such as a broken taillight.

The bill would have made it an infraction, enforceable against the driver of the car, if the driver or any passenger had an open container of alcohol while the vehicle was moving on a highway or local road. The bill would have exempted cars that were parked along local city and town roads — but still would have applied to cars parked on interstate and state highways, as well as the shoulders of such highways.

A fine of $90 for the first violation, $200 for a second and $500 for any subsequent violation would have been levied against the driver of a car. Exempted would have been limousines, taxis, motor homes and tailgate parties in parked cars.

Open bottles would have been allowed in a trunk — or if there were no trunk, in a locked glove compartment or the storage “area behind the last upright seat.”

The open-container law would have been enforced independently from DUI laws: A driver whose blood-alcohol level exceeds the legal limit could always be arrested for DUI, even if there were no open container in the vehicle; and a driver could have gotten a ticket for an open-container violation even if he and all his or her passengers weren’t not legally drunk.

An open-container infraction would not have put points against a driver’s license with the Department of Motor Vehicles, as tickets for moving violations such as speeding do.

The city-streets exclusion in the law — which would have exempted open containers in vehicles parked on city or town streets — had come in response to worries by some urban lawmakers. They said that people in their districts, where there is less wealth and property, often socialize and drink in cars parked in front of someone’s home.

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