DOJ files $100M lawsuit against ship owner in Baltimore Key Bridge collapse

The owner and operator of a cargo ship that caused a dangerous Baltimore bridge to collapse recklessly and ignored known electrical problems on the ship, the Justice Department charged Wednesday in a lawsuit seeking to recover more than $100 million the government spent to clear underwater water. trash and reopen the city port.

The lawsuit filed in Maryland provides the most detailed account yet of an ongoing series of failures at Dali that left its pilots and crew helpless in the face of impending disaster.

The Justice Department says the ship’s electrical and electronic systems were “judged” and improperly maintained, resulting in a blackout before it crashed into a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March. Six builders died when the bridge fell into the water.

“This disaster could have been completely avoided,” had it not been for the companies’ decision to put “ill-prepared crews on an unseaworthy vessel,” the lawsuit against Dali’s owner, Grace Ocean Private Ltd, says. and manager Synergy Marine Group, both from Singapore. .

“They did this to get profit from doing business in American ports. However, they cut corners in ways that put lives and infrastructure at risk,” said the complaint.

Darrell Wilson, a spokesman for Grace Ocean, said the owner and manager have no comment on the merits of the claim but “we look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”

Justice Department officials declined to answer questions Wednesday about whether a criminal investigation is ongoing. The FBI entered the ship in April.

The ship was sailing from Baltimore to Sri Lanka when its steering failed due to lack of power. Six men who were working on the road, which were full of potholes while they were working all night, died. The collapse caused a backlog of commercial ships passing through the Port of Baltimore for months before the terminal fully reopened in June.

The companies filed a lawsuit days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what would be the costliest maritime casualty case in history. Justice Department officials said there was no official support for that debt relief bid and vowed to oppose it vigorously.

“Through this civil lawsuit, the Department of Justice is working to ensure that the costs of removing the station and reopening the Port of Baltimore are borne by the companies that caused the accident, not the American taxpayer,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. statement.

The case came a day after the families of the victims expressed their intention to file a petition for the ship’s owner and captain to be held responsible for the tragedy.

Brawner Builders, who employed the victims, filed its own claim for compensation Wednesday, saying the company lost “six beloved employees” as well as construction equipment and vehicles they were using.

Documents released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board show that investigators found a loose cable in Dali, which when cut, caused a power outage similar to what happened as it approached the bridge on March 26.

But Dali had experienced energy problems before. Its first shutdown occurred while it was stationary in Baltimore after a crew member accidentally closed an exhaust damper during maintenance, causing one of the diesel engines to stall, according to safety investigators. Team members then moved from a single transformer and breaker system – which had been in use for several months – to a second one that was operational at take-off. That second system is where the investigators found the loose thread.

The Justice Department’s complaint points to “excessive vibration” on the ship that lawyers call “a known cause of transformer and electrical failure.” Instead of dealing with the source of the excessive vibration, the crew members “hacked” the ship, the complaint said.

The complaint notes that machinery crashed in the engine room and pieces of cargo were shaken. Inspectors also found loose nuts and bolts and broken electrical wiring, the Justice Department said. The ship’s electrical equipment was in such poor condition that an independent agency suspended further electrical inspections due to safety concerns, according to the lawsuit.

“Overall, this accident occurred as a result of reckless and negligent decisions made by Grace Ocean and Synergy, who recklessly chose to send an unnavigable vessel to navigate a sensitive waterway and ignored the dangers,” said Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Chetan A. Patil.

When the active transformer and breaker system failed as the ship approached the bridge, power was supposed to be automatically transferred to the ship’s other system, the lawsuit says, “but this automation, a safety feature designed for an imminent event, was negligently disabled. .” Instead, the ship’s engineers had to restore power manually, which took a full minute, the complaint says.

If the transformers had been in automatic mode instead of manual, the ship “would not have lost power and direction for any reasonable amount of time, and the devastating disaster that followed would not have occurred,” the lawsuit said.

Power was temporarily restored by engineers, but it was shut off again due to a separate problem with the ship’s fuel pumps, which was caused by a cost-cutting measure, the Justice Department said.

The anchor could not be deployed quickly and the bow thruster was not available at critical moments when the ship’s pilots were desperately trying to avoid disaster, according to the complaint.

-Lea Skene and Alanna Richer, Associated Press