- The owner of the ship that crashed into the Baltimore Bridge faces a slew of potential lawsuits.
- Experts say owners will likely seek to invoke the 1851 Act to limit potential damages.
- After the Titanic’s sinking in 1912, the Titanic’s owners took advantage of liability limitation laws.
The owner of a container ship that crashed and destroyed a major Baltimore bridge is expected to face mounting legal troubles, ranging from potential wrongful death lawsuits to property damage lawsuits.
Analysts have already warned that claims from early Tuesday’s deadly disaster that caused the sudden collapse of Maryland’s Francis Scott Key Bridge could cost insurers billions of dollars in losses. It is estimated that there is.
Three maritime law experts told Business Insider that the owners of the Singapore-flagged Dali will almost certainly invoke a 19th-century federal law successfully used by the owners of the Titanic to settle the dispute. and anticipated future litigation that may seek to limit liability.
“If it’s completely successful, it would put a cap on compensation payments,” Michael Starley, a maritime law expert and professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, told BI.
Grace Ocean Private Limited, the owner of the 95,000 tonne Dali ship, which was headed for Sri Lanka before colliding with one of the bridge supports, has been sued in federal court under the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851. You have approximately six months to file your complaint.
Grace Ocean Private Limited did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on Thursday.
“The likelihood that they file a limitation action is somewhere north of 99.99 percent,” Staley said.
After an accident, a ship owner may be entitled to a claim for damages up to the value of the ship.
This law allows ship owners to limit their claims for damages arising from maritime accidents to the post-accident value of the ship and the amount paid out of the cargo the ship was carrying. experts said.
“Essentially, the ship itself is treated as if it were its own single shipping company,” Starley said. “So you’re saying we should take all the assets of this one company and use them to pay the insurance claims.”
“That could save us $1 billion,” Staley estimated.
In order for a judge to grant a restriction under the law, the shipowner must prove that he was not at fault for the accident and that he “did not know or had no knowledge” of the negligence or circumstances that led to the accident. There is a need to. Incident.
Maritime law experts say whether the shipowner succeeds in filing a claim for limitation of liability will depend on the outcome of the accident investigation.
Dali’s crew had reported that the ship lost power just before it hit the bridge, plunging a group of construction workers and vehicles into the Patapsco River.
Two people were rescued from the water after the bridge collapsed. On Wednesday, authorities said the bodies of two victims were recovered from a submerged pickup truck. The other four people are presumed dead.
Part of the investigation into the tragedy will be to determine whether “dirty fuel” had anything to do with the ship’s initial loss of power, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
Titanic’s owners invoked the 1851 Act after it sank in 1912
Staley said that statutes of limitations are “regularly invoked, but far less successfully.”
Martin Davis, director of the Maritime Law Center at Tulane University School of Law, told BI that statistics show that “regardless of the circumstances, the vast majority of statute of limitations applications fail because the claimant has no claim of ‘negligence or secrecy.’ This is because it is relatively easy to prove.” As for the shipowner’s side. ”
Still, filing a statute of limitations allows shipowners to bring all their cases in one court, which Davis called “a huge benefit in and of itself.”
In the Titanic case, the statute of limitations challenge was successful.
According to Reuters, White Star Line seeks to limit liability in U.S. lawsuit to $92,000, the value of the recovered lifeboats, after the famous cruise ship sank in 1912, killing more than 1,500 people. Ta.
The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the court ultimately sided with the White Star Line. Millions of lawsuits were filed against White Star Line, all of which were eventually settled for a total of $664,000.
“Titanic was a brand new ship,” Davis said. “The cause of the casualties was pure navigational error – going too fast in iceberg-rich waters. There was no ‘fault or negligence’ on the part of the shipowner.”
Meanwhile, Gordon Carey, an Oregon-based maritime lawyer who filed a personal injury lawsuit against Grace Ocean Private Limited in 2019 on behalf of a man injured on another vessel, told BI: He said he does not expect Dali’s owner to prevail in the statute of limitations lawsuit.
“If you’re talking about a situation where there’s no power, where the ship is essentially disabled because of a lack of power, then the owner doesn’t know there’s a situation, or I can’t think of any reason why they shouldn’t know. It’s not maintained properly,” Carey said.
Mr Davies added: “It is too early to tell whether the petition is likely to be successful as much will depend on what the cause of the casualties turns out to be. However, given the current situation… So I have to say that it is,” he added. Restriction claims are unlikely to be successful. ”
Carey’s 2019 lawsuit involved an Oregon man who was injured when a rope ladder he was using on a boat owned by Grace Ocean Private Limited broke and he fell 7 meters. . The lawsuit was eventually settled.
Mr Carey said he was reluctant to make any assumptions about Grace Ocean Private Limited based on this incident.
Over the past decade, the owner and operator of the Dali, Synergy Marine Group, has been sued several times in U.S. federal court for worker injuries. Most of the lawsuits were settled, but one was dismissed.
When asked for comment, a Synergy Marine Group spokesperson referred BI to the latest press release issued on Thursday.
“We deeply regret this incident and the problems it has caused for the people of Baltimore and the local economy that depends on this vital port,” the statement said in part.
