On Wednesday, the Department of Justice filed a legal claim against the operator and owner of the big container ship that crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March, which resulted in six workers being killed.
The early-morning crash and collapse of sections of the bridge also paralyze traffic into and out of the Port of Baltimore for many weeks.
The lawsuit that the DOJ filed alleges that the actions the company took in the moments before the crash were “outrageous, grossly negligent, willful, wanton and reckless.”
In its lawsuit, the federal government is seeking in excess of $100 million for damages, which are meant to pay for the costs of the emergency response in the wake of the disaster, as well as the federal aid that was sent to help employees of the port who were out of work after the bridge’s collapse.
The person who oversees the civil division of the DOJ, Benjamin Mizer, commented:
“Those costs should be borne by the shipowner and operator, not the American taxpayer.”
In addition to those damages, Mizer said the DOJ would be seeking punitive damages “to try to keep this type of conduct from ever happening again.” The filing didn’t detail how much the DOJ is seeking in that type of damages.
The federal court filing details the multiple failures that happened onboard the ship, as well as multiple points where they could have prevented the disaster from happening.
There were many “jury-rigged” fixes to some serious problems on the Dali, the name of the ship, as well as poor overall maintenance, according to the suit. It adds that “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 the disaster.”
The ship is owned by a company called Grace Ocean Ltd. and is managed by Synergy Marine Group. Both of those companies are based in Singapore, which is where the ship is also registered.
The companies have argued that they should be limited to a maximum of $44 million in liability for the incident.
A federal law will govern this case. It states that shipowners can effectively limit what their liability is if they’re able to show they weren’t aware of certain defects before an accident occurs.
The DOJ says, though, that the ship’s operator and owner both knew that the ship shouldn’t have been sailing.
In a call with media members on Wednesday, Chetan Patil, the acting deputy assistant attorney general, said:
“This accident happened because of the careless and grossly negligent decisions made by Grace Ocean and Synergy, who recklessly chose to send an unseaworthy vessel to navigate a critical waterway and ignore the risks to American lives and the nation’s infrastructure.”
The New York Times reported that some experts in the shipping field said they witnessed evidence of alleged negligence.
In an email, University of Michigan professor of naval architecture and marine engineering, Jonathan Page, told The Times:
“There appear both material and operational conditions and circumstances within the owner’s and crew’s control where they were not following regulations and law to provide safe sailing conditions.”
