The U.S. Justice Department and the companies that own and managed the Dali, the ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, reached a nearly $102 million settlement Thursday.
The agreement comes one month after the federal government sued the companies to recoup the costs for the responding to the March 26 disaster that killed six people and caused the Key Bridge to collapse.
The settlement is only about $1 million less than what the Justice Department originally asked from the companies.
“This is a tremendous outcome that fully compensates the United States for the costs it incurred in responding to this disaster and holds the owner and operator of the DALI accountable,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement. “The prompt resolution of this matter also avoids the expense associated with litigating this complex case for potentially years.”
The U.S. response to the Key Bridge disaster involved efforts from dozens of federal, state and local agencies.
Responders removed about 50,000 tons of steel, concrete and asphalt from the Patapsco River.
The incident closed most ship traffic to the Port of Baltimore for nearly three months.
Grace Ocean also paid nearly $100,000 to the Coast Guard National Pollution Fund Center to deal with oil pollution from the incident.
This is nowhere near the end to Grace Ocean and Synergy’s legal troubles.
The companies are being sued by the state of Maryland, Baltimore city and County, the families of the victims, local businesses, unions of employees at the Port of Baltimore and companies that had cargo on the ship.
Grace Ocean filed for limited liability under the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851, which allows ship owners to reduce their exposure under certain circumstances.
That law could cap the damages the companies pay at about $44 million.
Those suing the companies need to show the company was negligent in order to vacate that cap in court.
In its filing, Baltimore is making the case that Grace Ocean provided the ship with an incompetent crew, unseaworthy equipment and failed to maintain the vessel in a reasonable manner.
The city says it is due payment for the replacement of the bridge, the costs of the obstruction to the river, costs for the loss of tax revenue, funds for the cleanup and money for the nuisance suffered by the residents of Baltimore.
“The Port of Baltimore was no stranger to large freighters like the Dali,” the lawyers representing Baltimore wrote in the filing. “For more than four decades, cargo ships made thousands of trips every year under the Key Bridge without incident. There was nothing about March 26, 2024 that should have changed that. But Petitioners, Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Pte Ltd saw fit to put a clearly unseaworthy vessel into the water.”
Recent court filings show that the trial will start somewhere between the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2027.
Meanwhile, the city is still recovering from the collapse of the bridge.
Most notably, trucks carrying HAZMAT materials must detour around the city since they are unable to take the tunnel that goes into Baltimore.
Maryland is hoping to build a new bridge by the fall of 2028. The state hired Kiewit in August to design the rebuild.