Baltimore Bridge Collapse: owners of cargo ship say 'ain't our fault!'

[thewayne]

Uh, yeah! That bridge came out of nowhere! Clearly it had been drinking!

The two outfits that own the Dali filed a court claim stating that the bridge collapse “was not due to any fault, neglect, or want of care on the part of Petitioners, the Vessel, or any persons or entities for whose acts Petitioners may be responsible.”. Also that a 19th century maritime law limits their liability to the value of the ship involved in the collision, $42.5million US.

Yeah, pull the other one, it has bells on it.

Considering the ship had previously been involved in collisions and previous reports of power loss, somehow I don't think that's going to hold up after investigation.

https://gizmodo.com/owners-of-cargo-ship-behind-baltimore-bridge-collapse-1851380182

Comments

[murakozi]

I can see why they made the claim, even though there's a history of similar issues. They don't want to be on the hook for replacing a bridge and all the claims from other shippers/businesses/workers that are losing gobs of money with the harbor being closed.

[armiphlage]

I'm surprised the ship isn't owned by a completely independent and legally distinct shell company, which happens to be leasing it for $1 a year to another completely distinct shell company which operates it, with both Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine PTE LTD merely arranging for goods to be stored in the ship.

[disneydream06]

DANG don't you just hate when those bridges come out of no where? :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon

[kathmandu]

There are complicated arrangements to do with cargo ships; I deal with them a little in my work.

Mostly the shipping lines own vessels directly, BUT shipping lines exist as more than one entity; often there's Shipping Line GmBH/SSA/LTD in some other country, with a US subsidiary to deal with US customers.

They have formed alliances, so you can book with Maersk or MSC or Zim and it will be the same vessels they're all sharing. I don't know if this extends to sharing liability for disasters; presumably just one company is responsible for operating and staffing a given vessel.

[thewayne]

Hard to say, it's possible they were in the middle of rearranging their shells when the accident happened and now they're stuck and exposed.

[arlie]

Knowing relatively little, I'm inclined to reserve judgment. Accidents do happen, and the crew gave warning in time to avoid additional deaths - imagine this happening with traffic on the bridge. We should probably resist the impulse to assign blame, particularly when the investigation has presumably barely begun.

[thewayne]

Agreed.  Apparently 30 seconds elapsed from the power loss to the pilot pulling out his cell phone and calling the bridge controllers to shut down the bridge.  It was amazing that only six people died that night.  Still tragic, but it could have been so much worse.  Myself, I'm very curious why the ship had a problem with loss of power before, presumably was repaired, then why did it happen again.  I expect we'll be finding out as the investigation continues.

[silveradept]

It will be an interesting question for the investigators. It's pretty clear that as soon as the power was lost, the operators did everything they could to try and prevent the ship from causing contact and warning the people in their path to clear out. So in that sense, they did what they could. What needs to be figured out is whether the situation that caused the power outage was preventable, or was caused by improper repairs, or some other thing where there could be liability involved.

[thewayne]

The ship, the Dali, is quite new.  Built in 2015 in South Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries.  And the previous collision was the next year, 2016.  Very curious, apparently sloppy ship handling to blame.  There is one problem with the design of the ship: it has a single screw.  This isn't really relevant to this collision, but if they had managed to regain power, they might have thrown the ship into full reverse, which would have resulted in huge torque steer and could have slammed the bow into the bridge pier with even more force.  If the ship had two screws, they would counter-rotate and cancel each other, no torque steer.  It also has a bow thruster for manouvering in-port.