The companies that own and manage the Dali have asked a federal judge to absolve them of liability for the cargo ship’s crash last week into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which immediately collapsed, killing six people.
Grace Ocean Private Ltd., the owner, and Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., which manages the 984-foot cargo ship, are both based in Singapore. Together, they filed a claim in Baltimore’s U.S. District Court asking a judge to clear them from liability or limit damages to the value of the ship plus the revenue it stood to make from its cargo, which they estimated at $43.7 million.
Shortly after leaving the Port of Baltimore for a monthslong voyage to Sri Lanka, the Dali, which weighed more than 112,000 tons loaded with freight, experienced a reported power outage near Key Bridge and smashed into one of its principal supporting piers around 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. The bridge crumbled in an instant, sending a crew of workers who were repairing potholes on Interstate 695 tumbling into the frigid river below.
Authorities rescued two of the men quickly, but an expansive search, featuring boats, helicopters and divers has turned up only the bodies of two others from the six-man crew. Four more remain missing and are presumed dead. Recovery efforts now focus on clearing the mess of mangled steel blocking the shipping channel that long provided cargo vessels passage into the Port of Baltimore and hopefully finding their bodies in the wreckage.
Officials have pledged to hold those behind the ship accountable for the accident, depending on what an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board turns up. That independent federal agency is probing everything from what went wrong aboard the Dali — and looking at its past — to the Key Bridge’s “fracture critical” design.
The costs of paying for the accident and its cleanup, and rebuilding the span, will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars if not more.
“Grace Ocean and Synergy filed their action to allow for all potential claimants seeking damages arising out of the incident to submit their claims in one case, which makes the legal process more efficient and prevents against inconsistent judgments and inefficient multiple proceedings,” said Darrell Wilson, a spokesman for the shipping companies, in an email.
The companies filed a claim under a “long-passed” statute — the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 — designed to protect the maritime industry, said New Orleans attorney Hugh “Skip” Lambert, who specializes in maritime law. Their filing, if successful, will funnel all claims stemming from the deadly crash and bridge collapse through one court, and would put the question of liability in front of a judge rather than a jury.
“Every time a boat hits something, a vessel of any size or value, and there’s significant damage, whether there’s personal injury or property, there’s a limitation of liability filed. It’s very common,” Lambert told The Baltimore Sun. “The success of it is not common.”
Lambert explained that to succeed vessel owners must prove there was no negligence on their part, which can be difficult.
The law was passed to protect the nascent U.S. shipping industry from claims for such incidents as piracy or storms, which owners could not control. It limited vessel owners’ liability to the value of the ship and its freight bill.
In their filing Monday, the shipping companies said the Dali was worth about $90 million at the beginning of its voyage. After the crash, they estimate repair and salvage costs for the ship would add up to about $47.5 million, reducing the ship’s value to $42.5 million.
They also said Maersk Line A/S, the cargo company that chartered the Dali, was paying $32,500 per day, meaning the ship had a “pending freight” of about $1.2 million.
Wilson, the spokesman, declined to answer questions about the companies’ valuation of the Dali’s 4,700-container load.
People or businesses harmed by the incident in question, whether they are pursuing a wrongful death suit or seeking relief for economic damages, can be represented by attorneys in the limitation of liability proceedings, Lambert said. There’s also the possibility of government attorneys, like a state attorney general, stepping in to represent the interests of the state or municipality and individuals harmed before they have their own lawyers.
The Office of Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown “is working with Governor Moore’s Administration and the relevant state agencies to protect and defend the interests of the State from the harms caused by the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge,” spokeswoman Jennifer Donelan said in an email. “The Attorney General will represent the State in any litigation, including actions to hold accountable the parties responsible for this disaster.”
The Dali’s owner and manager wrote in their court filing Monday that the companies are “aware of potential demands or claims,” though the identity of potential claimants and the amounts they were claiming were not yet known, their attorneys wrote. The attorneys also said “they have valid defenses to any and all such claims.”
According to Lambert, companies claiming limitation of liability have to prove they were not at fault.
“It’s only successful if the vessel owner is non-negligent, meaning they didn’t do anything wrong,” Lambert said. “Now this boat hit a bridge, so you have to wonder whether or not there was any responsibility on the part of the owner to prevent that from happening, in other words, to be negligent-free, in other words without fault.”
“Most limitation of liability actions,” continued Lambert, “fail in limiting the liability because there’s usually some fault on the part of the vessel owner.”
Integral in this case could be the abstract concept of “seaworthiness,” said Steve Yerrid, an attorney who represented the pilot when a cargo ship knocked over a Tampa, Florida, bridge in 1980.
If the ship was not seaworthy — that is, not able to be sailed safely — the ship owner might not be entitled to a limitation of liability.
“In this case,” Yerrid said, “I think that’s going to be a real problem for the ship owner.”
Baltimore Sun reporter Hayes Gardner contributed to this article.
