Exit status of a Command in Bash Scripting is always true

I'm trying to run a command ( gerrit query ) in bash and assign that to a variable. I'm using this is a bash script file & I want to handle the case that if the command throws an error( i.e if the gerrit query fails), I should be able to handle the same.

For example:

var=`ssh -p $GERRIT_PORT_NUMBER $GERRIT_SERVER_NAME gerrit query --current-patch-set $PATCHSET_ID`

I do know that I can check the last exit status using $? in bash, but for the above case, the assignment to the variable over-rides the earlier exit status ( i.e the gerrit query failure status) and the above command never fails. It is always true.

Can you let me know if there is a way to handle the exit status of a command even when it is assigned to a variable in bash.

Update:
My assumption was wrong here that an assignment was causing the overriding of the exit status and Charles example and explanation in his answer are correct. The real reason for the exit status being overridden was I was piping the output of the above command to a sed script which was the culprit in overriding the exit status. I found the following which helped me to resolve the issue. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/14270/get-exit-status-of-process-thats-piped-to-another/73180#73180 bash: pipe output AND capture exit status

Complete command that I was trying.

var=ssh -p $GERRIT_PORT_NUMBER $GERRIT_SERVER_NAME gerrit query --current-patch-set $PATCHSET_ID | sed 's/message//'