Key Bridge litigation: Attorneys prep for looming trial over shipowners’ liability

Listen to this article

Two years after a cargo ship slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, killing six highway workers and disrupting maritime trade at the Port of Baltimore, dozens of attorneys are preparing for the first civil trial over damages stemming from the collapse.

The first trial, scheduled to start in June and last about four weeks, will determine whether the shipowners can be held liable for billions of dollars in civil claims for the collapse on March 26, 2024, or if their liability will be capped at a small fraction of that.

State officials have largely kept quiet about the litigation as the trial date nears. Throughout the past week, state officials touted a strong rebound at the port over the past two years, as well as progress on their venture to build a new bridge. On Thursday, crews were using a 500-ton crane to drive permanent pile beneath the Patapsco River, though not much work above ground will be seen in the next year, Jim Harkness, chief engineer for the Maryland Transportation Authority, told reporters.

“At a time when too many people wonder whether building big and great things is still possible in our country, Maryland once again is going to lead the way and show what is possible,” Gov. Wes Moore said at a commemoration event in Dundalk.

Meanwhile, the sprawling discovery stage in the case stemming from the collapse is set to wrap up, with attorneys due to submit a status report Friday and a conference before U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar next week. Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Corp., the Dali’s respective owner and manager, said in court filings last November that the parties had exchanged “millions of documents” and participated in nearly 30 fact depositions in the United States and London.

And once the upcoming trial concludes, “there’s a lot of litigation that’s going on that’s going to really hinge on the outcome,” said Lindsey Brock III, an attorney at Florida-based Fowler White Burnett, P.A. who specializes in maritime law.

In the present case, Grace Ocean and Synergy are seeking to exonerate or cap their liability under an 1851 federal law that allows shipowners to limit their liability for damage claims to the value of the vessel and its pending freight — a total of $43.6 million for the Dali, according to the firms.

Baltimore’s Key Bridge destroyed: Everything you need to know

The time period when the Limitation of Liability Act was passed is key to its understanding, said Adam Deitz, a Washington-based maritime attorney whose practice, Mariner Law, PLLC, largely represents injured mariners. The act was a “really strong way to incentivize U.S. shipping” at a time when maritime freight was riskier, he said.

“We had all these various vessels — a lot of them had boilers and steam engines on them — and then we needed to carry people west,” said Deitz. “The problem with that is that those are basically big floating bombs.”

For the Dali’s owner and manager, the key to the first trial will be proving that negligent acts leading up to the collision happened without their privity and knowledge. If successful at the June bench trial, the firms will block billions of dollars’ worth of claims. 

“That’s going to be a pretty hard thing to do,” said Brock. Cargo ships across the globe are now equipped with sensors and instantaneous communication, and various probes into the bridge collapse have found that power outages onboard the Dali were known to the crew prior to the collapse.

“If you sneeze on one of these boats, it gets entered into a database, and then it immediately gets shot back to the head office, wherever the head office may be,” said Deitz.

The dozens of claimants involved have been building their cases around the theory that the shipowners were grossly negligent by sending the Dali on a voyage while knowing it was unseaworthy.

The Department of Justice already settled in 2024 for $102 million in cleanup costs. The state of Maryland has the largest claim among the remaining claimants — the state is seeking to recover economic losses as well as the ballooning cost of a replacement bridge, most recently estimated between $4.3 and $5.2 billion. 

The state’s claim alleges that the Dali’s owner, operator and crew “intentionally circumvented critical safety features” that would have restored the vessel’s power — and thus, propulsion and steerage needed to avoid a crash — after a loose connection in the electrical switchboard caused an initial blackout. The state alleges that the defects “had been present for many months,” though the Dali’s owner and operator failed to address them.

The National Transportation Safety Board has blamed the initial blackout on the loose wire connection. The board’s report, which also blames the state for not thoroughly assessing the bridge’s vulnerability to ship strikes or implementing countermeasures, is barred from being used in civil litigation related to the bridge. But the board’s findings of fact, such as the loose wire itself, are generally admissible, said Brock.

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, whose office is working with outside attorneys on the state claim, has stayed largely quiet about the litigation but said in 2024 when announcing the lawsuit that the collapse was caused by the “abject failures” of the two maritime firms. A spokesperson for Brown declined to comment Wednesday.

Dozens of other claimants are also seeking damages. Former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein, now a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, is representing the Dali’s chief engineer, who is considered an interested party in the case. Longtime Baltimore attorney William “Billy” Murphy Jr., of Murphy, Falcon & Murphy, is representing a road construction inspector who leaped to safety as the bridge came down, as well as eight International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333 members who lost work due to the collapse.

The families of the six men who died while filling potholes on the bridge have also filed claims, some of which have been referred to settlement conferences.

Meanwhile, Grace Ocean and Synergy have also sued Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., the Dali’s manufacturer, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that the shipbuilder defectively designed the switchboard that investigators say caused the blackouts and ensuing crash.