The Supreme Court of Canada will hear the case of a Quebec man challenging the results of a breathalyzer test.
Marc Cyr-Langlois was arrested in July 2012 for alleged drunk driving, taken to a police station, and then left alone for 20 minutes, at which point he was given an alcohol breath test.
He challenged the test and had the results thrown out in his first trial in Quebec Court, but the Crown appealed and won at Quebec Superior Court.
Cyr-Langlois appealed that result before Quebec's Court of Appeal and a majority of the judges that heard the case agreed that the test results should not be considered valid.
On Thursday the highest court in the land announced it would hear the Crown's challenge of that decision.
The legal matter is to determine whether or not the individual being tested did anything that could affect the test's results, such as vomiting or belching.
It's been established that Cyr-Langlois did not vomit while he was left alone, but it's impossible to know if he belched, hiccuped, or did something else during that time which could affect the alcohol test results.
The dissenting judge in last year's ruling by the Court of Appeal, Dominique Belanger, wrote that she found nothing produced during that hearing suggesting that burps could distort the results of a breathalyzer test, and so did not think an observation period was necessary.
