Goodman

The Department of Motor Vehicles and its director have appealed from a judgment which granted the petitioner below a peremptory writ of mandate commanding the setting aside of an order of suspension of his driver's license which had been promulgated pursuant to the provisions of section 13353 of the Vehicle Code following a formal hearing. The department and the director contend that the trial court erred in finding that the petitioner attempted to comply with conflicting directions of the law enforcement officer and did not refuse to submit to any chemical test. An examination of the findings and the evidence on which they were predicated [1] reveals that the petitioner did in fact refuse to submit to a chemical test, that the instructions, if deemed conflicting, were explained, and that any confusion in the mind of the petitioner was engendered not by the instructions given by the officers, but by his self-impaired ability to understand, whether induced by his partial intoxication or otherwise. The judgment must be reversed.

The function of the trial court in matters of this nature has been defined in James v. Dept. of Motor Vehicles (1968) 267 Cal. App.2d…