Brooklyn Federal Jury Awards $81.7 Million to a Tourist Who Lost Her Arm and Leg Under a Subway Train, the First US Verdict Faulting a Transit System for Failing to Install Platform Barriers, Though the MTA Is Fighting to Erase It

On August 2, 2016, Luisa Janssen Harger Da Silva, a 21-year-old student visiting New York from Brazil, was standing with her boyfriend on the B and Q platform at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center station in Brooklyn when she fainted and fell onto the tracks. An arriving train ran over her before it could stop. She survived, but the train severed her left arm and left leg.

A year later, David Roth of Roth & Roth, LLP filed suit for her in the Eastern District of New York, case 1:17-cv-04550, against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York City Transit Authority, and the train operator. The theory was not that fainting was anyone's fault. It was that the MTA had known for decades that people end up on the tracks, at a rate of roughly two to five train strikes a week and more than 5,000 people struck over 30 years, and had never seriously studied platform screen doors, intrusion detection, or any other fix. Evidence at trial showed the agency had been approached as far back as 2011 by companies offering to install platform doors for free in exchange for advertising revenue, and a 2019 internal report brushed the idea aside on cost and disruption grounds. Only after Michelle Go was pushed to her death in 2022 did the MTA begin installing fixed platform barriers, reaching dozens of stations by 2025.

Getting there took more than eight years of litigation, including years of discovery fights over the agency's internal safety documents and an immunity battle the defense pressed right up to trial. Judge Frederic Block denied the MTA's request to stay the trial for an interlocutory appeal, and jury selection began October 27, 2025. David Roth and Elliot Dolby Shields of Roth & Roth tried the case for Da Silva alongside co-counsel Robert Genis. The defense moved for a directed verdict and then for a mistrial. Both were denied.

The jury found for Da Silva, and the verdict entered on the docket on November 21, 2025 totaled $81.7 million against the Transit Authority and the train operator: $70 million for pain and suffering, $10 million for medical expenses, and $1.7 million for lost earnings. Press coverage called it a landmark, the first verdict in the United States to hold a transit system accountable for failing to install platform barriers or other protective devices for people who end up on the tracks.

Now the honest part, which matters more here than in most verdict stories: Da Silva has not been paid, and she may never see the full number. An MTA spokesman said the agency was disappointed in the verdict and intends to appeal. In May 2026 the defendants filed fully briefed post-trial motions under Rules 50(b) and 59 asking Judge Block to dismiss the complaint entirely or order a new trial, plus a request for a collateral-source hearing to reduce the award. Briefing wrapped in June 2026, and as of this writing the motions are pending. The verdict could be upheld, cut down, or wiped out, and a Second Circuit appeal likely follows whichever way Judge Block rules. What already cannot be undone is the precedent of the finding itself, and the platform barriers now standing at dozens of stations the MTA once said it could not afford to protect.