Driving ban for peer’s former wife who ‘has been to hell and back’
THE former wife of a Yorkshire peer was nearly one and a half times the drink drive limit when she was pulled over by police after sharing a bottle of wine with a friend, a court heard yesterday.
She was fined £700 with £45 costs, ordered to pay a £15 victim surcharge and was banned from driving for a year.
Grahame Stowe, mitigating, said his client’s driving record and personal background were both exemplary, adding that she had been diagnosed with cancer six years ago.
She had undergone surgery at a time when her marriage had been failing and she had to go through a ”protracted and rather unpleasant divorce”, he continued.
A year ago Mountgarret had discovered a mole on her back which had been removed in a Harrogate hospital. Two stitches had been put in the wound and she had thought the matter at an end.
But her health had gone rapidly downhill. She had undergone tests, eight MRI scans and six operations before being diagnosed with MRSA.
The court heard she had spent eight of the last 12 months in hospital. A friend who had heard of her trauma came round. After drinking a bottle of wine together, Mountgarret had found a birthday card for “a dear friend” and drove into Ripon to post it.
”She has been to hell and back,” continued Mr Stowe, adding that a driving ban for someone living in a village with no bus service or local shop would make her ”to a major extent a prisoner in her own home”.
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