A Arou­ca man, whose dri­ving per­mit was sus­pend­ed for six months af­ter he re­ceived three tick­ets in the space of five months last year, has sued the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty.

When the case brought by Zachary De Sil­va against the au­thor­i­ty and the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er came up for vir­tu­al hear­ing yes­ter­day morn­ing, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered that the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al be joined.

Seep­er­sad said that the case need­ed to be re­solved as it po­ten­tial­ly af­fect­ed dri­vers, who face sus­pen­sion for re­peat­ed traf­fic of­fences un­der the re­cent­ly in­tro­duced de­mer­it points sys­tem like De Sil­va.

Seep­er­sad not­ed that the case dealt with as­pects of an amend­ment to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act, which deal with the dis­cre­tion of the au­thor­i­ty and com­mis­sion­er to sus­pend the per­mits of er­rant dri­vers.

Seep­er­sad al­so said that he had to de­cide whether he could hear the case as the leg­is­la­tion, which was al­so brought to re­duce the back­log of traf­fic cas­es in the Mag­is­trate’s Courts, is sole­ly dealt with there.

De Sil­va re­ceived his first tick­et af­ter he was caught us­ing his cell­phone while dri­ving in May.

Two months lat­er, he re­ceived an­oth­er tick­et for breach­ing a traf­fic sign.

The last tick­et was is­sued in Sep­tem­ber for hav­ing a front pas­sen­ger with­out a seat belt.

In his court fil­ings, De Sil­va said he be­lieved that he would not re­ceive de­mer­it points if he paid the fines.

The au­thor­i­ty gave De Sil­va an op­por­tu­ni­ty to present a mit­i­ga­tion plea and then still de­cid­ed to sus­pend his per­mit for hav­ing be­tween 10 and 14 points with­in a three year pe­ri­od.

Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, sus­pen­sions vary be­tween six months and two years de­pend­ing on the num­ber of points ac­cu­mu­lat­ed.

In the law­suit, De Sil­va is claim­ing that the au­thor­i­ty’s move to car­ry out the pro­vi­sions of the leg­is­la­tion was harsh, op­pres­sive and dis­pro­por­tion­ate in the cir­cum­stances.

Dur­ing pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sion with the par­ties, Seep­er­sad al­so not­ed that De Sil­va’s claim over ig­no­rance of how the de­mer­it points sys­tem works was not a valid claim against his sus­pen­sion.

De Sil­va was rep­re­sent­ed by Devvon Williams and Ki­maa­da Ot­t­ley, while Rachel Theophilus and Sav­it­ri Ma­haraj rep­re­sent­ed the au­thor­i­ty and com­mis­sion­er.

The case is sched­uled to come up for hear­ing on Jan­u­ary 19.