A Farce Over a Blood Test

Bureaucratic Blunder: Tyrolean Man Ordered to Pay 780 Euros

It all began with a police stop (stock photo).(Bild: pdh)

Once the bureaucratic machine gets rolling, there seems to be no stopping it. A driver from Tyrol learned this the hard way. The man was told to pay 780 euros for a test that should never have taken place in the first place.  

It was a past offense that came back to haunt a Tyrolean man more than a year later. The whole ordeal turned into an unnecessary gauntlet for him, which could only be brought to an end with the help of the State Ombudsman’s Office.

It all started with a driver’s license revocation
A look back at the beginning: It all started with the revocation of his driver’s license. The man was alleged to have driven a car while under the influence of drugs. So far, so reprehensible. His driver’s license was revoked. The Tyrolean man wanted to pay off the 1,000-euro fine in installments. But that’s when the fateful misunderstanding occurred at the relevant district administrative office. The office interpreted the request as an appeal and submitted it to the State Administrative Court—even though, at that point, the deadline for filing an appeal—if there had been one—had already expired.

The Provincial Administrative Court was also involved.(Bild: Christof Birbaumer)

A lot of effort for a needless proceeding
Apparently, no one noticed this, and the bureaucratic machine went into overdrive. The Provincial Administrative Court requested evidence of the offense from the district administration office. The office then sent the blood sample—which had been taken from the man during the police stop in question more than a year earlier—to a laboratory for analysis.

And then the bombshell! The bill for 780 euros was sent to the driver. He was expected to pay for something that, strictly speaking, should never have been pursued in the first place. But the Tyrolean didn’t find that out until much later, after a great deal of hassle. At an oral hearing before the Provincial Administrative Court, the man was informed that his appeal—which wasn’t even a valid appeal—was being dismissed as filed too late.

No complaint procedure should have been initiated at all.

Landesvolksanwaltschaft

What now? On the advice of the State Ombudsman’s Office, the Tyrolean filed an appeal against the cost assessment. “No appeal proceedings should have been conducted at all, and thus neither the blood should have been analyzed nor the costs imposed on the complainant,” the State Ombudsman’s Office noted in a report.

The Tyrolean was ultimately successful; he does not have to pay the costs for the blood test after all. What remains is a bitter aftertaste. Without the help of the State Ombudsman’s Office, this citizen would likely have paid dearly for an administrative error.