The US Department of Justice filed a legal claim on Wednesday against the owner and operator of a container ship whose Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed last March, killing six workers and shutting down the Port of Baltimore for weeks.
The lawsuit asserts that the companies’ actions that led to the disaster were “reckless, grossly negligent, willful, wanton and reckless.”
The government is seeking more than $100 million in compensation to cover the costs of the disaster’s widespread emergency response and federal aid to port workers who were out of work.
“Those costs should be borne by the ship owner and operator, not the American taxpayer,” said Benjamin Miser, deputy associate attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil division. He said the department would also seek punitive damages and “try to prevent this kind of behavior from happening again.”
Wednesday’s action did not specify the amount of punitive damages the department is seeking.
Filed in federal court in Maryland, the Justice Department’s action details what investigators know about the ship’s short and disastrous voyage, describes a cascade of failures aboard the ship and details several points at which the disaster could have been prevented.
Due to poor maintenance or “jury-rigged” repairs on the vessel, the suit asserts, “none of the four means of controlling the tally — her propeller, rudder, anchor or bow thrust — were necessary to prevent or even mitigate this disaster when they were working.”
Dally is registered in Singapore and owned by Grace Ocean Limited and managed by Synergy Marine Group, both based in Singapore.
The companies — referred to in legal documents as petitioners — said their liability for the incident should not exceed $44 million.
In an email message Wednesday morning, Darrell Wilson, a representative for Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, said the government’s move was expected. The deadline for filing such requests is September 24.
“The owner and manager have no comment on the merits of any claim at this time, but we look forward to our day in court to set the record straight,” he added.
Justice Department officials said they could not comment on the status of a separate federal criminal investigation into the crash.
The Dolly, reaching the height of the Eiffel Tower, lost power and crashed into a drawbridge on March 26, causing the bridge to collapse and killing six people who were repairing the walkway on the bridge.
On Tuesday, the families of the three slain men announced they were also suing Tali’s owner.
The ship was trapped in the twisted wreckage as the bridge fell into the Patapsco River, blocking access to the East Coast’s busiest port, Baltimore. A massive clean-up effort involving dozens of barges, tugboats, dredges, floating cranes and explosives was launched. About 50,000 tons of debris had to be removed from the river.
The temporary shipping channels were soon reopened to some vessels, and in May, after sufficient wreckage had been removed, the Dolly was removed and made the two-and-a-half-mile journey back upriver to the terminal it had left two months earlier. The badly damaged ship was later moved to a shipyard in Norfolk for repairs.
The main shipping lane, the 700-foot-wide Fort McHenry Federal Channel, was not fully cleared until June. And it will take longer to rebuild the bridge. State officials have said it will take four years to rebuild the Key Bridge at a cost of $1.9 billion.
The state of Maryland will try to recoup the cost of rebuilding the bridge through legal action, a Justice Department official said Wednesday.
The ship was en route to Sri Lanka with about 4,700 containers and 1.5 million gallons of fuel and lubricants at the time of the accident. None of the 21 crew members, most of whom were Indian nationals, were injured in the crash; Both pilots on board at the time were missing.
