Metra cancer lawsuits for employees

Metra is the commuter railroad for the six-county Chicago area, running 11 lines over nearly 500 route miles. Service began on June 8, 1984, and many workers have spent decades on these lines.

Your employer matters, since a FELA claim is filed against the railroad that employed you. On the BNSF Line, the crews work for BNSF Railway, not Metra. Union Pacific announced in 2023 that operation of its three Metra lines would move to Metra by early 2024. The other seven lines, Metra Electric, Rock Island, SouthWest Service, Heritage Corridor, North Central Service and both Milwaukee lines, are run by Metra's own operating arm, the Northern Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation.

When you call or send the short form, it reaches a firm that represents railroad workers in FELA cases, and the review costs nothing. Your call may be recorded so the firm keeps an accurate record of the jobs you held.

The reviewer will ask you about:

• which railroads you worked for, and when
• the jobs you held
• the yards, shops, or routes where you worked
• what diagnosis you received
• when a doctor first linked it to your railroad work

From 2021 to 2025, Metra sent federal safety regulators 254 reports of on-duty employee injuries and illnesses. Not one Metra report since 1997 lists cancer. Six involve toxic substances that affected breathing.

That gap does not prove Metra jobs are free of cancer risk. Cancer tends to appear years after the exposure, often once a worker has already left the railroad, so these reports seldom capture those cases. Looking at all 17 railroads on this site, only four cancer reports appear in the records since 1997.

State workers' compensation does not cover railroad workers. Rather, FELA lets them seek compensation from the railroad for what they have lost. That law favors the worker in several ways:

• The case reaches a jury when railroad negligence contributed at all, even slightly to the illness.
• Even a worker who shared some blame may recover, though the award is cut by that share.
• The railroad can't argue you accepted the risks of the job when its own negligence helped cause your illness.
• FELA also covers illnesses that build up over long exposure, not only sudden accidents.

A claim can pay for medical care, wages lost now and later, and the pain the illness has caused. If the worker has died, the personal representative brings the claim on behalf of the surviving spouse and children.

When an illness develops slowly, the three years start once the harm from the exposure becomes apparent. In real life, that moment often comes when a doctor ties the cancer to work.

Letting that deadline pass can end a claim. In a 2026 case, a car inspector's doctor told him in May 2014 that his bladder cancer was linked to what he breathed at work. He waited until April 2019 to file, and the court ruled his claim for that cancer came too late.

No railroad rule or contract can stop your coworkers from telling what they know about your illness. If a doctor has tied your cancer to your Metra work, call now for your free review while your three years are still running.