Family Gets $26M After Daughter is Hit by Car

A $26 million settlement is the end result of a court decision for a family whose daughter was hit by a drunken driver in New Jersey nearly a decade ago.

The girl, Antonia Verni of Cliffside Park, was left paralyzed after a car accident caused by a driver leaving a New York Giants game back in 1999. She was 2 years old at the time of the incident.

The amount of the settlement had been sealed until yesterday, when a state appellate court overturned a lower court's decision and allowed the information to be unveiled.

Verni's family sued Aramark, the stadium's concessionaire at the Meadowlands, claiming that employees continued to serve beer to Daniel Lanzaro of Cresskill after he was visibly intoxicated and slurring his speech. Lanzaro was judged to have a blood alcohol level of 0.226, more than twice the legal limit at the time, following the accident.

Three years ago, a Bergen County jury awarded the Verni family $105 million, however that ruling was reversed on appeal a year later. The parties involved came to a settlement last year before the case went back to court, but the agreement was sealed.

Antonia Verni, now 11, and her mother, Fazila, reportedly wanted to keep the settlement private due to concerns over how the girl's estranged father, Ronald, managed funds received from earlier settlements with other defendants.

The Verni family arrived at separate settlements with the Giants, the NFL and the defendant for a total of approximately $1.2 million.