A young lady, fined for damaging two motorbikes in a traffic accident in Tower Road, has had her conviction overturned on appeal because of an error in the date indicated on the charge sheet.

Nicole Anne Testa, 19, had been charged with reckless and dangerous driving, with having slightly injured a motorist and with having involuntarily damaged two motorbikes following the unfortunate accident which took place one evening in May 2015.

The young driver had been found guilty by a magistrate's court of the unintentional damage to the two motorbikes, while being acquitted of the other charges. She was fined €400 and was also ordered to fork out some €2,000 to cover court inquiry costs.

However, the teenager's lawyers argued on appeal that there had been clear inconsistencies in the dates written on different documents related to the case. Bearing in mind that nowadays the courts insist on precision not only in the date, but also in respect of the time of such incidents, this error clearly amounted to a procedural defect.

There was no denying that the accident had actually happened on May 8, as rightly recorded on the Police Internal Reporting System report and also in an affidavit drawn up by a police sergeant who had investigated the incident. However, the charges presented in court stated that the accident had occurred on May 5. To make matters worse, in another affidavit a police inspector had declared May 9 as the date of the occurrence.

Faced with this procedural defect, the court of appeal presided over by Madame Justice Edwina Grima upheld the appeal, revoking the sentence and acquitting the young driver of all the charges.

Lawyer Arthur Azzopardi appeared for the defence.