A successful lawyer was caught drink-driving after being placed under police surveillance after his stepdaughter told authorities that he had been arguing with her mother, a court heard.
Council officials launched a ‘safeguarding’ probe into Geoffrey Underhill after the stepdaughter told a student welfare officer that problems at the £1.7million family home were affecting her academic work, magistrates were told.
When a council safeguarding officer was sent to investigate the 56-year-old told her that he regularly stopped for a pint of lager shandy on his way to his home in in Bowdon, Greater Manchester, from his £200,000-a-year job.
This, he claims, was misinterpreted to mean he was coming home to have a drunken argument with his wife. As a result of this information, police secretly placed a ‘marker’ on his £60,000 Audi Q7 and he was subsequently pulled over six times in two weeks, each time passing a breath test.
But on the seventh occasion, Underhill was found to be one-and-a-half times the alcohol limit – and he has now been banned for 12 months after admitting drink-driving.
Geoffrey Underhill (left) and his lawyer Gwyn Lewis outside court
Pictured: Warrington Magistrates’ Court where Underhill was sentenced
Underhill, who works for Manchester-based Abacus Law, was breath-tested at Lymm Services on the M56 in Cheshire at 3am on March 23 having drunk two glasses of wine.
It showed he had 53 micrograms of alcohol in 100ml of breath, over the legal limit of 35mg, Warrington Magistrates’ Court heard.
Giving evidence, he told the hearing: ‘Over the last couple of years my wife and I have been having some difficulties. We both have high-pressure careers and we would argue quite a lot.
‘I also have sleep apnoea and we do not share a bedroom because I am a noisy sleeper. My stepdaughter is quite sensitive and it was bothering her – more so than we realised. She went to pastoral help in her university, saying, ‘My mum and my stepdad are arguing and it is bothering me. It is affecting my work’.’
Underhill said he initially thought the call from a woman at the council safeguarding team was ‘a prank’. ‘She came to the house and it came out as part of my routine, after leaving the office I go for one drink on the way home.
‘But it seems she took it that I was going to the pub, going home and having a drunken argument with my wife.’ His lawyer Gwyn Lewis said: ‘As regards his habitual practice of having a shandy after work, it may be sensible to rethink that.’
Underhill was also fined £3,115 and ordered to pay £1,866 in costs. But magistrates agreed to suspend the disqualification pending an appeal against the sentence.