A restaurant server and mother of four has been awarded $143,812 by a B.C. Supreme Court judge for injuries related to two separate crashes in Whalley, one of them involving a Coast Mountain bus.
In both cases, Brigitte Bergeron’s vehicle was hit from behind while stopped at an intersection.
The defendants in the first crash were Donald Malloy, South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority and Coast Mountain Bus Company Ltd. In this case a transit bus driven by Malloy rear-ended her vehicle on April 16, 2015. She was 49.
It happened at King George Boulevard and 102nd Avenue. Bergeron was in her 1993 Chevrolet Venture, stopped at the intersection, when the bus hit her.
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Malloy testified that the bus was stopped, but after an alarm sounded and he tried to turn it off his foot slipped off the brake, causing the bus to move forward and nudge Bergeron’s car.
“He described minor damage to her bumper,” Justice Sharon Matthews noted in her reasons for judgment, delivered in Vancouver. “The agreed facts are that Ms. Bergeron’s vehicle was a total loss and the repairs totalled $310.41.”
The defendants in the second crash were Harjan Singh Notay and Harvinder Kaur Notay. That was on April 23, 2017, also in Surrey. Harjan was driving a vehicle owned by Harvinder.
The court heard Bergeron, age 51, was stopped at a red light at 104th Avenue and 100th Street in Whalley when she was hit from behind. The repair bill this time was $490.80.
The judge decided Bergeron’s physical injuries were caused by the bus crash while both collisions exacerbated her pre-existing stress.
Both sets of defendants admitted liability.
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