A Gary family won $18 million in damages against two trucking firms Monday after their teenage son was struck and thrown in a 2016 accident off Interstate 394, suffering permanent brain damage.

       Gustavo Cornejo Jr, then 17, and his father pulled off the shoulder in Sauk Village, Illinois, on Sept. 27, 2016, when their landscaping trailer’s lights appeared out, lawyers said in the civil suit. The teen was out of the truck when a semitractor-trailer was barreling toward them. There were skid marks for 300 feet, lawyers said.

       The truck “jackknifed” the landscaping trailer, striking Cornejo and throwing him 30 feet. He hit his head and suffered brain damage, including a traumatic brain injury and brain bleeding, a skull fracture, broken ribs and vertebrae, the suit said.

       He was unconscious, spending two weeks in a coma and about a month in the hospital, according to the suit.

       The jury in Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago awarded damages Monday after a three-week civil trial, deliberating for 8 hours over two days. More than $3 million of the settlement is devoted to his future medical care, lawyers said.

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       The family has had “a very rough road,” their lawyer, Bradley M. Cosgrove, said in a Zoom news conference Monday. Cornejo “requires supervision in most aspects of his life.” Co-counsel Jack J. Casciato, both of Chicago-based Clifford Law Offices, also represented the family.

       His mother, Francine Cornejo, 43, of Gary’s Glen Park section, said her son was a “different person” following the accident and she now spends most of her time caring for his needs.

       He had “the hopes and dreams of any other teen,” she said. “All of those dreams are lost and gone.”

       The settlement named the driver and two firms based in South Dakota and New Jersey.

       A woman who answered the phone at Dakota Lines Trucking Company in Vermillion, South Dakota, declined to comment. A representative from Alliance Shipper Inc. of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, couldn’t be immediately reached.

       Gary family wins $18 million against trucking firms after son was struck in 2016 in Sauk Village

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