Judicial Review (Appeal) of Alberta Notice of Administrative Penalty (NAP) or Immediate Roadside Sanction (IRS)

Did you lose your Immediate Roadside Sanction (IRS) or Notice of Administrative Penalty (NAP) Review because a SafeRoads adjudicator was unreasonable?

Our highly trained and experienced lawyers can help appeal the decision and get your license back while you wait for your day in court.

How to Launch your Judicial Review (Appeal)

WARNING: You only have 30 days to launch a Judicial Review (appeal). 

Applying for a Judicial Review involves filing of the ‘appeal’ to the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta. The application process is simple, but you only have 30 days to file. Missing the deadline means losing the opportunity to overturn the adjudicator’s unreasonable decision.

Remember, the adjudicator who decided your case was not a judge (or even a lawyer). It’s just another government employee, and they do make mistakes.

You Don’t Need a Local Lawyer

All Judicial Reviews are conducted entirely online and can be completed from anywhere in Alberta. This process allows us to conduct defences from our centralized offices in Calgary or Edmonton. Don’t feel like you need to hire a lawyer just because they’re in your local area. It’s far more important to pick the right lawyer with the expertise you need.

How Long Does the Judicial Review Process Take?

Judicial Review applications can take a long time to wind their way through the justice system. From the day of filing, it can take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to appear before a judge. The judge will then decide whether the adjudicator’s decision was unreasonable and may take weeks or even months to issue that decision. In the meantime, your license suspension may be lifted. For more information about this process, see our article on Getting Your License Back on Judicial Review (Appeal).

What Happens if you Win or Lose the Judicial Review

If we can convince a Court of King’s Bench Justice that the adjudicator’s decision was unreasonable, your penalty may be cancelled on the spot! At the very least, the case would be sent back for a new hearing in front of a different adjudicator.

There is no harm in filing a Judicial Review. Technically, the government can seek minor monetary compensation (costs) if your application is unsuccessful. Practically, to our knowledge, this has never happened.

If the judge decides that the adjudicator’s decision was reasonable, the worst thing they would do is uphold the earlier decision and maintain the penalty you are already serving.

Our Experience

Our lawyers are leaders in Judicial Reviews of Immediate Roadside Sanction matters. By working as a team, we leverage our collective resources, precedents, and experience to benefit each of our clients.

Landmark Judicial Review Decisions

We have successfully overturned numerous unreasonable decisions by adjudicators. Michael Oykhman and Joseph Beller successfully challenged an unreasonable decision all the way to the Court of Appeal of Alberta. In the landmark decision Demars v Alberta (Director of SafeRoads), 2024 ABCA 132, our team successfully argued that the records provided to the driver were deficient and could not be authenticated. This completely transformed the authentication requirement for the entire SafeRoads Alberta program and resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of Administrative Penalties.

Even though we were initially successful in the Judicial Review, the government wanted to appeal this further. After our unanimous win at the Alberta Court of Appeal, our client was even awarded costs (monetary compensation) for having to defend this case before the highest court in Alberta.

Our team was also successful in the reported decision of Kolner v Alberta (Director of SafeRoads), 2024 ABKB 456. In that case, the adjudicator unreasonably concluded that there was no right to counsel at any stage of the roadside screening process. We did not agree with that decision and recommended that our client appeal through the Judicial Review Process. Michael Oykhman was ultimately successful in establishing that there is, in fact, a right to counsel (albeit a suspended one) at the roadside. The Kolner decision has been cited in more than 300 subsequent cases (and counting). It has generally been referenced for the proposition that police need to clearly inform drivers of the difference between criminal charges and the administrative SafeRoads process to allow drivers to make an informed decision regarding their options at the roadside.

Similarly, Neal Dixon has succeeded in dozens of Judicial Reviews, and was successful in the reported decision of Kloot v Alberta (Director of SafeRoads), 2024 ABKB 171. In that case, the adjudicator had unreasonably found that the client intentionally did not provide a breath sample (refusal). The judge overturned the decision, and the matter was sent back for a new review with a different adjudicator, resulting in the cancellation of the NAP.

Other notable successes in the Judicial Review process include Giroux v Director of SafeRoads Alberta, 2023 ABKB 450, and Jones v Director of SafeRoads Alberta, 2023 ABKB 350. Both cases were unreasonably decided by an adjudicator, but those errors were overturned at the Court of King’s Bench by our lawyers through the Judicial Review process.