Justice Department Files $100 Million Claim in Fatal Baltimore Bridge Collapse

The U.S. Justice Department filed a legal claim on Wednesday against the owner and operator of the container ship that collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge last March, killing six workers and paralyzing the Port of Baltimore for weeks.

The lawsuit asserts that the companies’ actions leading up to the catastrophe were “outrageous, grossly negligent, willful, wanton, and reckless.”

The government is seeking more than $100 million in damages to cover the costs of the sprawling emergency response to the disaster and the federal aid to port employees who were put out of work.

“Those costs should be borne by the shipowner and operator, not the American taxpayer,” said Benjamin Mizer, a deputy associate attorney general who is in charge of the Justice Department’s civil division. He added that the department would be seeking punitive damages as well, “to try to keep this type of conduct from ever happening again.”

The action on Wednesday did not name an amount for the punitive damages the department was seeking.

Filed in federal court in Maryland, the Justice Department’s action lays out in detail what investigators have learned about the ship’s short and catastrophic journey that night, describing a cascade of failures onboard and multiple points when the disaster could have been prevented.

Because of poor maintenance or “jury-rigged” fixes to serious problems aboard the ship, known as the Dali, “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 asserts.

The Dali is registered in Singapore and owned by Grace Ocean Ltd. and managed by Synergy Marine Group, both of which are based in Singapore.

The companies — referred to as petitioners in the legal papers — had said their liability for the incident should be limited to no more than $44 million.

In an email message on Wednesday morning, Darrell Wilson, a representative of Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, said that the government’s action was anticipated, given the Sept. 24 deadline for filing such claims.

“The owner and manager will have no further comment on the merits of any claim at this time, but we do look forward to our day in court to set the record straight,” he added.

Justice Department officials said they could not comment on the status of a separate federal criminal investigation into the crash.

The Dali, as long as the height of the Eiffel Tower, lost power and slammed into the Key Bridge on March 26, causing the bridge to collapse and killing six men who were repairing pavement on the bridge.

On Tuesday, the families of three of the men who were killed announced that they, too, were suing the owner of the Dali.

The ship became stuck in the twisted wreckage as the bridge fell into the Patapsco River, blocking access to the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the East Coast. An enormous cleanup effort was begun, involving dozens of barges, tugboats, excavators, floating cranes and even explosives. Some 50,000 tons of debris had to be cleared from the river.

Temporary shipping channels were soon reopened to some vessels, and in May, after enough wreckage was removed, the Dali was dislodged and made the two-and-a-half-mile trip back upriver to the terminal it had left two months before. The badly damaged ship was later moved to a shipyard in Norfolk for repairs.

The main shipping route, the 700-foot-wide Fort McHenry Federal Channel, was not fully cleared until June. And rebuilding the bridge will take much longer. State officials have said that it would take four years to reconstruct the Key Bridge at a cost of up to $1.9 billion.

A Justice Department official said Wednesday that the state of Maryland would attempt to recoup the cost of rebuilding the bridge through legal actions.

The ship was headed for Sri Lanka at the time of the crash with around 4,700 containers on board, as well as 1.5 million gallons of fuel and lubricant oil. None of the 21 members of the crew, most of whom were Indian citizens, were injured in the crash; neither were two pilots who were aboard at the time.