Companies to Pay $101.9 Million to Settle Baltimore Bridge Collapse Lawsuit

The suit by the Justice Department was filed last month and laid out what investigators had learned about the ship’s short and catastrophic journey.

The owner and the operator of the container ship that slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge last March, killing six workers and shutting down the Port of Baltimore for weeks, agreed on Thursday to pay more than $100 million to settle a civil claim brought by the U.S. Justice Department.

“Nearly seven months after one of the worst transportation disasters in recent memory, which claimed six lives and caused untold damage, we have reached an important milestone with today’s settlement,” Benjamin C. Mizer, the principal deputy associate attorney general, said in a statement.

A spokesman for Grace Ocean Private Ltd., which owns the Dali ship, and Synergy Marine Private Ltd., which operates the vessel, did not immediately provide comment. The companies are based in Singapore.

In its suit, filed in September, the Justice Department laid out in detail what investigators had learned about the ship’s short and catastrophic journey on March 26, describing a cascade of failures onboard and multiple points during which when the disaster could have been prevented.

Because of poor maintenance or “jury-rigged” fixes to serious problems aboard the ship, “none of the four means available to help control the Dali — her propeller, rudder, anchor, or bow thruster — worked when they were needed to avert or even mitigate this disaster,” the suit asserted.

Instead, just before dawn, the Dali, which was bound for Sri Lanka, lost power as it pulled out of the port, regained power and then lost power again before striking the bridge, which collapsed and plunged into the water, killing six people working on the bridge. The ship and the fallen bridge blocked the channel and severed a transportation artery, bringing maritime business at one of the nation’s busiest ports to a halt.

The Justice Department’s suit arose from the companies’ effort to limit their liability to $44 million. Under federal law, shipowners can cap their legal responsibility if they can prove that they did not know about serious problems with a vessel beforehand. But the government argued that the owners knew that the Dali was unseaworthy before it left port.

A separate criminal investigation by the Justice Department is continuing. In September, federal agents boarded a container ship in the Baltimore harbor that is also managed by Synergy, though the authorities have not said why agents boarded the vessel.

The settlement announced on Thursday, which will cover the costs that the federal government bore in responding to the disaster, is far from a final legal resolution, given a lengthy list of claims against the companies.

The state of Maryland, which is responsible for rebuilding the bridge, has also sued the companies. The new bridge is expected to take four years to build and cost $1.9 billion.

The families of three of the men who were killed announced in September that they were suing. The construction firm that employed the men also filed a lawsuit, as have several other companies that depend on port traffic for commerce. The city of Baltimore filed a lawsuit against Grace Ocean and Synergy in the spring.

The ship was carrying around 4,700 containers, as well as 1.5 million gallons of fuel and lubricant oil. There was a 21-person crew on board, most of whom were Indian citizens. One crew member sustained minor injuries in the crash.

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