Four years after a Hanover Park infant was shot in the head during a traffic altercation on the Northwest Tollway, the motorist convicted of firing the gun has agreed to settle a civil suit by paying the family $75,000.
Diana Penman and her daughter, Brittany Stauss, now 4 1/2, were offered the settlement by the insurance company for David Corn, who is serving a 25-year prison term after pleading guilty in criminal proceedings to armed violence.
The settlement should cover Brittany’s outstanding medical and legal bills, Penman’s lawyer, John Kolb, said Thursday. The gunshot left Brittany permanently brain-damaged.
Though three brain operations have helped the girl, who now lives with her mother in Belvidere, Ill., she remains unable to fully form words or stand on her own. She is partially blind and undergoes regular speech, physical and vision therapy–treatments that she is expected to need the rest of her life.
The settlement comes as a bittersweet victory for Penman, who is relieved that much of the medical burden, at least, has been lifted.
“No matter how much it is or how little it might be, for the damage that was done it’s not enough,” she said. “How could you ask for something greater or less–or even have an opinion–for something like this?”
Penman sued Corn and Brittany’s father, Richard Mar, in connection with the April 14, 1994, shooting on the tollway near the Des Plaines oasis.
The traffic altercation began when Corn apparently tailgated Mar, who was driving Penman, Brittany and her twin brother, Timothy, in a van. At the time, Corn, an ex-convict, was driving on a revoked license.
Corn and Mar jockeyed in traffic and shouted at each other before Corn fired a single shot from a handgun at Mar’s van, police said. The bullet pierced the van’s side and struck Brittany, who was in a car seat in the back seat.
Brittany’s medical bills are approaching $200,000, but the neurologist and the Illinois Department of Public Aid, which are due money from Brittany’s initial treatments, have agreed to settle for far less, Kolb said.
The $75,000 settlement was reached Wednesday night, before the civil suit was scheduled to go to trial Thursday. Penman sued Corn, alleging negligence, intentional assault with a weapon and willful and wanton misconduct.
“I think that getting anything from a despondent criminal is a victory,” Kolb said. “But it’s a shallow victory. How can money right the injury done to this little girl? Nothing is going to give this little girl her life back. Nothing is bring this girl back to her mother.”
Penman also is suing Mar for negligence, alleging that his actions on the tollway the day of the shooting were “unreasonable and endangered Brittany’s life,” Kolb said. Penman and Mar no longer live together.
That case also was expected to go to trial Thursday, but Mar is trying to file for bankruptcy, which could delay the proceedings, Kolb said.
Any money that can be recovered from that lawsuit will be applied to Brittany’s future medical bills, Kolb said.
Besides Brittany’s regular therapy and visits to medical specialists, it’s likely that she will need another operation because her skull still has soft spots that haven’t healed, he said.
Penman, Brittany and Timothy live in Belvidere, Ill., with Mar’s mother.
Penman will be at Mar’s trial, she said, for Brittany’s sake.
“I’ll stick with her to the end, and then some,” she said.
