SURREY - A man who had a couple of drinks but had the good sense to ask his sober buddy to drive ironically ended up getting into a traffic crash anyway.
Parminder Singh Sandhu, 38, was a passenger in his wife's 2007 Nissan Sentra. It was in the early morning hours of April 7, 2010 and he'd had a couple drinks, so he asked his friend Harjinder Grewal, who had not had anything to drink that evening, to drive.They were heading north on 124th Street in Newton when, without warning, a 1998 Honda heading south, driven by defendantJaswinder Singh Gabri, attempted a left turn onto 80th Avenue and crashed with their car."The impact was violent," Justice Miriam Maisonville noted in her reasons for judgment, following a trial in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver last Thursday.Airbags were triggered, Sandhu's knee hit the dashboard and his head and neck hit the back of the seat.His car a write-off, Sandhu called a friend to pick him up and drive him home.The court heard Sandhu is married, has two young sons, is the family breadwinner and worked as a longshoreman since 2004.Maisonville awarded him $183,920 in damages.tzytaruk@thenownewspaper.com