DOJ reaches $100 million settlement in Baltimore bridge collapse
Six men died when the container ship Dali crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge. (Photo by Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
The owner of the Dali container ship that crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge earlier this year, collapsing the span and killing six people, has agreed to pay more than $100 million in damages to resolve a Justice Department lawsuit, authorities said Thursday.
The Justice Department announced the settlement agreement in a news release, saying that the ship’s owner, Grace Ocean Private Ltd., and operator, Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., would pay $103 million in funds that would go to federal agencies affected by the collapse. That figure far exceeds the $43.6 million cap the companies had sought on the liabilities they could be made to pay—and signals the possibility of many more payouts on the horizon.
The state of Maryland, which owned and operated the Key Bridge, is pursuing separate damages, the department said, alongside dozens of others who have made claims against Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine since the disaster seven months ago. They and the Justice Department have asserted the companies knowingly let a dangerous and unseaworthy vessel out on the water.
“This is a tremendous outcome that fully compensates the United States for the costs it incurred in responding to this disaster and holds the owner and operator of the DALI accountable,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement. “The prompt resolution of this matter also avoids the expense associated with litigating this complex case for potentially years.”
Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer called the settlement an “important milestone” in the sprawling legal case against Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine.
A spokesperson for the companies did not immediately provide comment Thursday evening.
The Justice Department and U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland had filed a lawsuit against both entities on Sept. 18, seeking more than $100 million in economic damages that authorities said the U.S. government incurred in the aftermath of the Key Bridge collapse, as well as unspecified punitive damages. The Justice Department news release says the settlement was meant to cover “costs borne in responding to the catastrophic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.”
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said the settlement came at “warp speed,” rare for a legal case expected to be as complex and drawn out as this one—and a clear sign, in his view, of the strength of the government’s evidence against the ship’s owner and operator. Continuing litigation they were likely to lose, he said, would only drive up legal costs and create negative publicity.
“It’s good to get out as quickly as you can for as little as you can,” Tobias said. “But that’s not going to absolve them of liability as to the others.”
The FBI has separately been pursuing a criminal investigation related to the bridge’s collapse, looking at least in part at whether the crew left the port knowing the vessel had serious system problems, officials familiar with the probe have said. The status of that investigation could not immediately be learned Thursday.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit alleged that the Dali, a 984-foot Singapore-flagged cargo vessel, experienced mechanical, electrical and crew-related failures in the four minutes before it plowed into the bridge.
Four backstops meant to help control the ship as it experienced two blackouts—the propeller, rudder, anchor and bow thruster—failed to work in the critical moments before the crash, the Justice Department alleged.
Those failures could have been prevented had Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine not cut corners on known safety issues and hired an ill-trained staff, federal officials alleged.
The Justice Department’s detailed retelling of the Dali’s failures were repeated by a host of attorneys representing the dozens of other claimants who expect to seek damages against Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, including two men who survived the collapse, the families of the six men who died while working on the span, businesses and workers whose livelihood were impacted by the shuttered Port of Baltimore and state and local government officials.
The eight victims of the Key Bridge collapse were all members of a contract construction crew that had been hired by the state to repair potholes on the Key Bridge roadway. When the Dali struck a support pillar for the span just after midnight on March 26, seven of the men fell into the water. One of them survived, alongside the crew’s inspector, who was able to run to safety as the bridge fell beneath his feet.
Attorneys for the owner and operator and all parties seeking possible compensation in the disaster will meet with the judge on the case next Tuesday to set a calendar for the proceedings.
