Ah yes, the Chicago lottery, you don't even need a ticket to play

By Mitch Smith

Tribune reporter

9:06 p.m. CDT, September 23, 2013

A man injured when a drunk Chicago municipal worker plowed a city-owned truck into a group of pedestrians two years ago will receive more than $2.4 million from the city, one of his lawyers said Monday.

Stephen Dewart, then 27, was passing out fliers for his wife's wedding consulting business in May 2011 when a Streets & Sanitation worker drove onto the sidewalk and struck him on the Near North Side, said the lawyer, Susan Novosad.

"He was being a good husband and a good friend," Novosad said, "and he was in the right place at the wrong time."

Dwight Washington, the city laborer driving the truck, had a blood-alcohol content more than twice the legal limit and an open bottle of brandy wedged beneath his gas pedal when the vehicle left the road and injured seven pedestrians. Washington is now in prison.

Dewart sustained fractured bones and vertebrae in the collision, Novosad said.

The judgment "validates the injuries he sustained," Novosad said. "It validates their wrongdoing."

Court docket information on the Cook County website confirms that a judgment was entered in favor of Dewart on Friday, but the filing did not list the amount of the judgment.

The city agreed to pay out $6.25 million last year to settle another case involving the same crash.