Key Bridge litigation: Dali operators settle with MD for $2.25B

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The state of Maryland will receive $2.25 billion from the owner and operator of the Dali, the container ship that crashed into Baltimore‘s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March 2024, destroying the bridge and killing six people.

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Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a Tuesday statement that Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group, the respective owner and operator of the freighter, had agreed to the final terms of a settlement that was originally announced last month.

“The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge sent shockwaves through Maryland and caused damages on a scale this State had never seen,” Brown stated in a news release.

“This $2.25 billion settlement reflects the full measure of accountability we were able to secure from the vessel interests,” he said.

A news release from Brown’s office said that in reaching the agreement, the state and its legal team “carefully examined the available resources of Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, including available insurance limits,” and concluded that the settlement would maximize the recovery. The release did not mention any other terms of the settlement, other than the multibillion-dollar amount.

But Brown did make clear in his statement that his office still intends to pursue separate claims against Hyundai Heavy Industries, the firm that built the Dali. Synergy and Grace Ocean sued the shipbuilder last year in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging that the Dali’s manufacturer built a defective ship.

“We will continue to press our claims against the shipbuilder whose fault helped bring this bridge down,” Brown said. Spokespeople for Synergy and Hyundai did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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The cost to replace the bridge could exceed $5 billion. A civil trial on Synergy Marine’s and Grace Ocean’s liability is scheduled to begin June 1 for the dozens of other parties that have claims, including the Baltimore City and County governments, the injured and deceased workers and those whose property was on the Dali.

The state will sit that trial out, along with the Department of Justice, which settled its claim in late 2024 for over $100 million. Both alleged that the Singaporean firms cut corners and disregarded electrical problems on the Dali, which lost power twice shortly before the cargo ship slammed into the bridge. The Justice Department said that the “jury-rigged” systems onboard led to both outages and a sequence of other failures that rendered the crew unable to steer to safety. 

Since then, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded in a report that a single loose wire caused a breaker to unexpectedly open, prompting the cascade of events that led to two vessel blackouts and a loss of both propulsion and steering near the bridge.

In court filings, the shipowners have described the loose wire as a “latent defect buried deep in an electrical switchboard” that “neither the crew nor shore management could possibly have identified” before heading toward the bridge. Attorneys concluded in a statement of facts that the collision with the bridge was an “unavoidable accident,” writing that the ship’s crew complied with all laws and regulations and that the vessel’s defects were undetectable.

Also on Tuesday, officials announced criminal charges against Synergy and one of its employees, accusing them of concealing potential onboard hazards in official documents and presenting misleading compliance paperwork to the Coast Guard.

This story has been updated.