Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott and other city officials have filed court papers alleging negligence by ship manager Synergy Marine and shipowner Grace Ocean over the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The allegation came as part of the first claim filed in a federal court case over the deadly incident involving the 9,962-teu container ship Dali (built 2015).
Rattling off a series of allegations, Scott and the Baltimore City Council used the filing to accuse the two shipping companies targeted in the filing of “carelessness, negligence, gross negligence and recklessness” and describe the vessel as unseaworthy.
“The allision was a direct result of petitioners’ negligence,” their lawyers wrote, using the legal term for a vessel’s strike against a stationary object, in the claim filed in response to the Dali owner’s and technical manager’s petition to limit liability.
The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink legal gambit comes as investigators are still working to piece together what happened to the Dali before it struck the bridge in March while it was on charter to AP Moller-Maersk at the time of the incident.
In court papers, the city officials alleged that alarms went off on the ship’s refrigerated containers before it left port, indicating an “inconsistent power supply” on the vessel.
“On information and belief, the power supply problem was either not investigated or, if investigated, not fixed,” they alleged in legal papers, using legal terminology that suggests secondhand information rather than direct knowledge.
The officials also alleged that after the ship lost power, the emergency diesel generator either did not start or emergency power was insufficient to avoid the bridge collision.
Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board and US Coast Guard have not issued preliminary findings of their probe, but an NTSB official has said that the electrical power system in the engine room was the central focus of their investigation.
Darrell Wilson, a spokesman for Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, declined to comment on Baltimore’s negligence allegation.
Investigation ongoing
“The investigations by the NTSB and the Coast Guard are still ongoing into the cause, and just out of respect for those investigations and any future legal proceedings, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time,” he said.
In their limitation of liability filing, the companies claimed that the casualty “was not due to any fault, neglect or want of care” on the part of the Dali or its owner and manager, as is common in such cases.
Baltimore city officials did not specify a damage amount in the claim, but they point to $70bn in revenue generated by the port of Baltimore and some $989m purchases in the local area and the state of Maryland, highlighting the economic damage that shutting down the shipping channel in the Patapsco River may have.
Their lawyers highlighted that ocean carriers made 3,600 trips under the Francis Scott Key Bridge in 2023, and no ship has hit the bridge since 1980, meaning vessels have passed under it 130,000 times since then.
“Petitioners’ negligence is, in other words, readily apparent, and no blame could conceivably be lain at the city’s feet for the allision,” they said.
The claim was filed by Baltimore city solicitor Ebony Thompson, with lawyers from Saltz Mongeluzze Bendesky and DiCello Leavitt.
Baltimore has also threatened claims against Maersk and the shipbuilder of the Dali, Hyundai Heavy Industries.
