Confidential settlement talks underway for construction worker killed in Key Bridge collapse
By Mike Hellgren
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BALTIMORE, Maryland (WJZ) — Lawyers spent hours behind closed doors in Baltimore’s federal courthouse on Monday negotiating a settlement for Dorlian Castillo Cabrera, one of the workers who died when the Key Bridge collapsed in 2024.
The magistrate judge asked reporters to leave the courtroom because the discussions involving groups of lawyers are intended to be confidential.
Remembering Dorlian
Dorlian Castillo Cabrera would have turned 27 years old this year.
He came to Maryland from Guatemala for a better life and to help provide for his mother, according to published reports.
Castillo Cabrera was with his co-workers filling potholes on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it collapsed before sunrise on March 26, 2024.
Traffic camera video taken seconds before the bridge collapse showed the crew as the cargo ship Dali passed underneath the Key Bridge.
Castillo Cabrera was later found inside his red work truck “submerged in approximately 25 feet of water in the area of the middle span of the bridge,” the Maryland State Police superintendent said at the time.
Mourners packed his funeral. His gray metal casket sat at the front of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Highlandtown.
Castillo Cabrera developed a friendship with Jose Maynor Lopez, who was also from Guatemala and died in the tragedy.
“I feel bad,” Lopez’s widow, Isabel Franco, told WJZ last year. “They were always together.”
Settlement negotiations
Castillo Cabrera could be the first victim of the tragedy to settle, as court records first revealed last month.
Lawyers met promptly at 10 a.m. Monday outside a third-floor courtroom at Baltimore’s Garmatz federal courthouse, where negotiations got underway out of public view.
Allen Black, a maritime lawyer and adjunct law professor at the University of Maryland, recently spoke to WJZ about the case. He is not affiliated with any of the parties.
“Their damages are not open-ended. It’s got to be tied to an estimate of pain and suffering, and how one qualifies that is a mystery to me just as much as it is probably everybody else,” Black said. “But at some point, the judge is going to have to say, ‘Here’s the number that fairly compensates his estate for the pain and suffering that he went through—and for the fright that he went through in that incident.'”
Black noted that Castillo Cabrera being unmarried and having no children will likely factor into any payout.
“The ship’s interests will presumably make an offer, and Mr. Cabrera’s estate will come forward and negotiate it out. It is kind of an interesting one. Mr. Cabrera is one of the two personal injury wrongful death plaintiffs who don’t have dependents,” Black said. “Obviously, it’s a horrible thing that they went through, but at some point, people are going to have to pick a number for that—and without dependents, it becomes a much easier task for the parties to try and resolve.”
A source told WJZ it will be up to the parties involved whether to publicly release information on any settlement once it is finalized, and they may choose not to do so.
Limiting liability
The Dali’s owner, Grace Ocean Limited, and management company, Synergy Marine, have tried to limit their liability to $43.7 million, the value of the ship and its contents.
A judge is expected to rule sometime next year on whether that cap can be lifted.
Black said it makes sense for the victims to finalize settlements now.
“My expectation is that the claims for the personal injury of the parties are going to total less than that,” he said.
The state recently submitted a motion to strike Synergy from having limited liability.
“If that motion were to be successful, then Synergy could be sued for negligence in their own right as the vessel manager without the benefit of limitation of liability,” Black said. “That then opens up a whole pot of insurance money to pay claims and damages—so that’s a big motion that’s hanging out there.”
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