75-year-old sober driver with disability was accused of DUI. Now he sues in Tennessee

A 75-year-old man with a disability was sober when Tennessee deputies arrested him on a charge of driving under the influence, according to a lawsuit. Nearly a year later, the driver says it’s a pattern.

The now-76-year-old filed a lawsuit Sunday, Aug. 18, against Rutherford County, saying it failed to provide adequate training on how medical conditions can affect an individual’s ability to perform field sobriety tests, creating a “custom” of wrongful DUI arrests.

A spokeswoman for the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office told McClatchy News they do not comment on pending legal matters.

The man’s lawyer, Paul Randolph, referenced to McClatchy News a WSMV4 investigation with other instances of sober drivers with disabilities arrested on DUI charges in the state. Randolph said he used information in the investigation to notice a pattern of wrongful DUI arrests, which he calls out in the lawsuit.

But this pattern is not limited to Tennessee. A 2017 Cornell Study of 8,984 people found that people with disabilities were almost 44% more likely to be arrested by age 28 than those without.

According to the lawsuit, the driver was heading home from playing pool on Aug. 17, 2023, when a deputy pulled him over after he said he noticed the man’s tail light out. The deputy said he also noticed the vehicle crossing a lane, but dashcam footage shows the driver stayed in the lane, the lawsuit says.

The deputy said he noticed signs that the man was driving drunk and said he’s “never known a sober person shoot much pool,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says deputies asked the driver to complete a sobriety test, although according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, people over 65 should not be given sobriety tests because age can affect their performance.

The man also had a disabled driver place card on his rearview mirror, according to a screenshot from dashcam footage included in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says the driver failed the balance-dependent tests due to age, back problems and vertigo.

Randolph said a blood test, which was negative for narcotics and alcohol, was returned to the driver five months later. On March 13 — almost seven months later — the DUI charge was dropped, according to the lawsuit.

“Those charges usually end up getting dismissed when their toxicology comes back negative, but that doesn’t erase the fact that they’re dealing with this for months, sometimes longer than half a year,” Randolph said.

The driver is requesting an award of punitive damages, according to the lawsuit.

Rutherford County is about a 40-mile drive southeast from Nashville.

Sober 50-year-old kept appearing drunk. Then doctors found her UTIs were to blame

81-year-old fatally hit after exiting car following crash on interstate, VA cops say

Driver blames Hurricane Debby for doing poorly on DUI sobriety test, Florida cops say