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NEWS DECEMBER 9, 2019 ¦ 7

Father-and-Son Lawyers Get $23M Verdict
for Boy Injured in School Bus Crash

By Robert Storace

Gabriel Goncalves suffered two skull fractures when his school bus crashed into a tree in Wolcott in June 2015.

A A jury awarded him $23,050,000.
Waterbury Superior Court jury has awarded Michael D’Amico, a member at D’Amico & Pettinic-
$23,050,000 to a boy who suffered two skull chi in Watertown. “It was wrong, so very wrong. It
fractures after the school bus he was a pas- was sad that the defense looked at Gabriel that way
senger in struck a tree in Wolcott in 2015. before the crash.”
The case hinged on whether the boy’s aggres- The jury’s Nov. 25 verdict, Michael D’Amico said,
sive behavior following the accident was due to his was a vindication.
moderate to severe autism or the bus collision. The “Gabriel wasn’t viewed by the jury as a child with
plaintiff ’s attorneys—father-and-son team Michael no future before the crash,” he said. “The defense
and Jeremy D’Amico—expressed outrage at what painted him as a child with autism with no future
they claim was the defense’s attempt to paint plain- before the crash, but children with autism can be
tiff Gabriel Goncalves as an autistic boy with little or employed and can live independently and semi-in-
no future before the crash. dependently.”
“It almost seemed like I was moving back in time, Representing bus driver Mark Hudobenko and
and that we turned the clock back 50 or 75 years to Worhunsky Corp., the bus company, was Darien
where there were biases and prejudices in society solo practitioner G. Randall Avery, who declined
about what children with autism looked like, and Monday to comment on the case.
whether they should be put away some place,” said
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