US files US$ 100m lawsuit against Dali owner and operator
The US government has filed a civil claim against the owner and operator of Dali, the containership which caused the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024, resulting in six deaths. The lawsuit, filed on September 18 in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, seeks over US$ 100 million in damages and recovery costs related to the incident, according to WorldCargo News.
The 10,000 TEU Dali is owned by Singapore-based Grace Ocean, and managed by Synergy Marine. It was chartered by Maersk, operating on a 2M alliance service between Baltimore and the Far East. In April, Grace Ocean officially declared general average for the incident.
In the early morning hours of March 26, the Dali left the Port of Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka. While navigating through the Fort McHenry Channel, the vessel lost power, regained power, and then lost power again before crashing into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which plunged into the water below. Six construction workers lost their lives when the bridge collapsed. The incident was followed by several months of response efforts aimed at searching for the missing bodies and removing more than 50,000 tons of steel, concrete, and asphalt from the channel and the container ship. In the meantime, temporary channels were also cleared to relieve the bottleneck at the Port of Baltimore. On June 10, the US reopened the Fort McHenry Channel, allowing commercial navigation once again to flow freely into and out of the Port of Baltimore.
“As we outline in our claim, this catastrophe was entirely avoidable. We allege that the Dali’s owner and operator recklessly cut corners in ways that risked lives and the economic well-being of the nation. In particular, our claim alleges that the owner and operator of the Dali were well aware of vibration issues on the vessel that could cause a power outage. But instead of taking necessary precautions, they did the opposite,” said Benjamin Mizer, the Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the US Justice Department. “Out of negligence, mismanagement, and, at times, a desire to cut costs, they configured the ship’s electrical and mechanical systems in a way that prevented those systems from being able to quickly restore propulsion and steering after a power outage. As a result, when the Dali lost power, a cascading set of failures led to disaster.”
The Justice Department said that the US has spent over US$ 100 million responding to this disaster, to clear the channel, and to reopen the Port of Baltimore.
“Those costs should be borne by the ship’s owner and operator, not the American taxpayer. But that is not all. To try to keep this type of conduct from ever happening again, we are also seeking punitive damages. The Justice Department is committed to holding the Dali’s owner and operator responsible for the harm they caused and to deter them and others from taking reckless risks with American lives and infrastructure,” Mizer added.
The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is still investigating the incident. However, based on the investigation update from June, NTSB found that during the accident, when the vessel was about three ship lengths from the Key Bridge, two electrical breakers, HR1 and LR1, unexpectedly shut down, causing a blackout that cut off power to the ship’s lighting and most equipment. NTSB, working with the ship’s crew, discovered an issue with a device (called an undervoltage release) that automatically shuts down the breaker if the voltage drops too low. Investigators have removed a key electrical component, the terminal block from the control circuit for HR1’s undervoltage release, for further examination and are continuing to study the ship’s electrical system to understand the cause of the incident.
