A New York state court judge has given final approval to the Nassau County government's $25 million settlement with a woman who was left with a traumatic brain injury in a motor vehicle accident for which a jury found the county was liable because of poor sight distance at the crash site.

A drunken driver smashed into Nicollette Iacone's vehicle on the night of Sept. 8, 2007, in Oceanside at a T-shaped intersection joining Oceanside Road with Erwin Place. Iacone was 17 years old at the time and, because of her injuries, she is unable to speak and uses a wheelchair, her family's attorney said.

The driver, who had a $25,000 insurance policy on his vehicle, was criminally charged in the crash; Iacone's family said that the first lawyer they hired said that the best they could hope for in terms of seeking compensation was to get indemnified, said Ted Rosenberg of Rosenberg & Gluck, who represented Iacone and her family through the end of the trial.

But Rosenberg said Commack-based attorney John A. Meringolo came across the case and referred it to Rosenberg, who said the attorneys turned their focus on the intersection where Iacone's accident occurred and on the Nassau County government's liability for the conditions there.

Rosenberg argued that sight distance at the intersection was diminished by hedges and signage, as well as a metal box that was installed at the intersection for holding equipment for traffic lights.

As the case moved to trial on liability, Rosenberg said that he knew there would be a “difficult burden to carry” in terms of winning over a jury in a lawsuit against their county government regarding injuries from an motor vehicle accident caused by a drunken driver.  

“Our theory that the intersection was unsafe, having negligent road conditions, is a difficult set of circumstances,” Rosenberg said.   

But in the weeks leading up to the trial, Rosenberg said he obtained discovery material that tipped the scales in the plaintiffs' favor: documentation that the Nassau County Department of Public Works had received numerous complaints from residents in the past about conditions at the intersection.

The jury found Nassau County 86 percent at fault, assigning the remaining 14 percent of the blame to the drunken driver.

Before a trial on damages, the county government engaged in settlement talks with the plaintiffs. In October, the Nassau County Legislature approved the settlement amount and, this week, Rosenberg received word from acting Nassau County Supreme Court Justice Denise Sher's chambers that the judge gave final approval for the settlement.  

“The challenge of the case was to hold the county responsible,” Rosenberg said.  

Representatives for the Nassau County government did not respond to requests for comment.

The Iacone settlement was one of three recent eight-figure payouts for the Nassau County government, and the judgments have raised concerns about the ramifications for the county's finances, CBS-2 New York reported in October.

A jury awarded $19 million last year to a motorcyclist whose leg was amputated following a motor vehicle accident at an intersection in Port Washington that the motorcyclist said the county should have installed a traffic light rather than a stop sign.

Also last year, the county paid $45 million to two men who were convicted of a 1984 rape and murder but who were later exonerated after spending 18 years in prison.