A CHEF who brought his family to the UK from the United States fell foul of drink-drive laws when he allowed colleagues to persuade him to join them on a night out, a court heard yesterday.

Harrogate magistrates were told how a police patrol spotted father-of-two Franscisco Javier Sandoval at the wheel of a car with a rear light out as it headed out of Masham on the A6108 towards Ripon on November 21.

When they stopped 41-year-old Sandoval, a breath test showed he had almost one-and-a-half-times the alcohol limit.

When Sandoval, of The Chase, Boroughbridge, pleaded guilty to drink-driving and not having insurance, his solicitor, Richard Buchanan, said he was a Mexican who had lived in the US for 28 years. He had married an English girl and come here to live with her, their two young children and two she had from a previous marriage.

He worked in Wetherby and, while he did not socialise much, preferring to spend his free time at home with his family, he had been cajoled by colleagues to go out with them. He had driven to Middleham for a meal and was on his way home when the police stopped him.

Sandoval had not realised only his wife - whose sick parents had been the reason for the family's move across the Atlantic - was named on the motor insurance policy.