$6 Million Verdict for Widow of Construction Worker Killed by Metromover Train
A Miami-Dade jury awarded $6 million to the widow of Oscar Cabrera, a construction worker killed in February 2017 when a remotely operated Metromover train struck a boom lift near the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. station while he was working on the Brightline terminal project.
What happened
On the night of February 8, 2017, Oscar Antonio Cabrera, 43, was elevated in a boom lift near the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Metromover station in downtown Miami. He and a coworker were part of a subcontracted crew building what would become the Brightline passenger terminal, working at height when a remotely operated Metromover train came through and struck the lift.
The collision threw both men from the basket. Cabrera fell to the ground and died from his injuries at Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center. His coworker, who was wearing a safety harness, survived after dangling from a ledge until fellow workers helped him down. According to his widow, Cabrera was diligent about safety protocols throughout his roughly two-decade career in construction.
Rubenstein Law attorneys Gregory Deutch and Raul Garcia Jr. brought a wrongful death action against Miami-Dade County, the operator of the Metromover system. The case turned on coordination failures between the on-site safety monitor and the remote Metromover command center. The firm argued that the County was required to confirm no trains were operating within a defined clearance of active construction work, and that those protocols were not followed on the night Cabrera was killed.
Nearly nine years after the incident, a Miami-Dade jury returned a $6 million verdict in November 2025 for Cabrera's widow, Stephanie Bravo Cabrera, finding Miami-Dade County 70 percent at fault for his death. Claims against other defendants, including Brightline and two construction companies, were resolved before trial.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Rubenstein Law Personal Injury Lawyers
All Rubenstein Law Personal Injury Lawyers proven verdicts →A Massachusetts jury returned a $1 billion punitive verdict against Philip Morris in 2022 over the lung cancer death of Barbara Fontaine, a case handled in part by Rubenstein Law attorney Kevin Donovan; the punitive award was later reduced to $56 million, a figure the state Supreme Judicial Court upheld in April 2026.
A Middlesex County jury awarded Joseph Reppucci and his wife $20.7 million after finding that R.J. Reynolds and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. bore responsibility for the oropharyngeal cancer he developed following decades of smoking their cigarettes.
A Miami-Dade jury returned a $4,877,775 verdict for Juan Del Valle, who slipped on water from a leaking produce refrigeration unit at a Winn-Dixie in Miami Lakes and underwent three spinal surgeries, leaving him with permanent hardware in his spine.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.