DOJ sues owners of ship that leveled Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge

The Department of Justice Wednesday initiated a lawsuit against the owner and operator of the Dali container ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing a catastrophic collapse that killed six construction workers in March. The DOJ says basic safety procedures were ignored, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

The DOJ is claiming $100M in damages to reimburse the public funds used to respond to the March 2024 disaster and repair the bridge. In addition to the deaths, the bridge collapse shut down a vital highway and stopped shipping at the Port of Baltimore.

The lawsuit is directed against two Singaporean corporations: Grace Ocean, the registered owner of the Dali, and Synergy Marine, who managed it. "We allege that the Dali’s owner and operator recklessly cut corners in ways that risked lives and the economic well-being of the nation,” said Justice Department lawyer Benjamin C. Mizer.

Mizer contends that the company and operators were negligent in their maintenance of safety standards in order to cut costs and deliberately rigged the ship’s electrical and mechanical systems so that they would not function properly in the event of a power outage. “As a result,” he said, “when the Dali lost power, a cascading set of failures led to disaster.”

A spokesman for both companies offered no comment on the lawsuit’s charges but said, “We do look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”

Emergency crews from federal, state and municipal governments worked for weeks to clean up the mess created by the collision and had to dislodge about 50,000 tons of steel, asphalt and concrete from the water while removing the shipwreck. The port was finally opened back up and running normal operations after clean-up operations ceased in June.

The FBI has previously opened a criminal investigation into the disaster. It sent agents to observe the crash site in April. President Joe Biden has claimed to have taken the train over the bridge “many times,” even though the bridge had no rail lines.