Lawyer: Katie Flynn family settles suit

The lawyer for the family of a 7-year-old girl killed in a 2005 wrong-way drunken driving crash said Wednesday that he has reached a settlement in the lawsuit against the convicted driver and the company that owned the limousine in which the girl and her family were riding.

Christopher McGrath, of Garden City, attorney for the family of Katie Flynn, of Lido Beach, would not disclose the settlement amount. "There is no way that any lawyer could ever compensate this family for all they went through," he said.

Donald Henderson, of Carle Place, attorney for convicted driver Martin Heidgen, said the settlement was for $1.3 million.

Heidgen had offered to settle the suit shortly after it was filed, Henderson said. "He certainly had no desire to see the family go through or continue to go through the additional pain of a civil trial," Henderson said. "He was sympathetic and understood the need to get this behind them."

Katie and her family were returning home from a wedding in Bayville when Heidgen, then 24, who had three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood, crashed into their limousine. The limousine's driver, Stanley Rabinowitz, of Farmingdale, was also killed.

Heidgen was convicted of depraved indifference murder and is serving 18 years to life in an upstate prison.

Katie Flynn's parents, Neil and Jennifer Flynn, and her grandparents, Christopher and Denise Tangney, all of whom were in the limousine at the time of the crash, sued Heidgen and the limousine company, the Mineola-based U.S. Limousine Service Ltd., for damages, in State Supreme Court in Mineola.

Dara Rosenbaum, of White Plains, who represents U.S. Limousine Service, declined to comment.