Police said Salem Trad was drunk behind the wheel when his speeding car struck a taxi on the Beltway.
Trad said he wasn't the driver that night, he had been having sex in the backseat.
Whatever was happening in that car, it cost Trad $22,000 in court on Tuesday.
A jury in Fairfax, Va., County Court awarded the taxi driver, Abdu Omar, 28, less than a third of the $75,000 he was asking for, WTOP reported on Tuesday. The award was given to offset the driver's medical bills.
Salem Trad, 22, of Woodbridge was on his way back from Baltimore celebrating his 21st birthday when he got into a wreck with a taxi on the Beltway near Telegraph Road. He was arrested after the crash, and the Post reported he was convicted of driving under the influence in May 2010.
Trad told police before his DUI trial in criminal court that he could not have been driving the car, because he had been having sex with a female passenger in the back seat. A judge did not believe him then and convicted him of drunk driving.
Undeterred, Trad tried to use the same defense in the civil trial that concluded Tuesday. According to the Post, he told the court that he was asleep following sex at the time of the car crash.
But Trad had a problem — the female passenger testified in court that she not been a party to any back-seat coupling. A third passenger in the car, who had also been out celebrating with Trad that night, denied being the driver that night in court, as Trad suggested he was.
Following the trial on Tuesday afternoon, Omar told the Post he was pleased with the jury's decision. "They helped me with my problem," he said, "so I'm happy."
