The owner and manager of a cargo ship that rammed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge before the span collapsed last week filed a court petition Monday seeking to limit their legal liability for the deadly disaster.
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00 The owner and manager of the cargo ship that rammed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge
00:04 filed a court petition seeking to limit their legal liability. The company's limitation of
00:09 liability petition is a routine but important procedure for the cases litigated under U.S.
00:15 maritime law. A federal court in Maryland ultimately decides who is responsible and
00:20 how much they owe. Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private owns the DALI, the vessel that lost power
00:26 before it slammed into the bridge. Synergy Marine Group, also based in Singapore, is the ship's
00:31 manager. Their joint filing seeks to cap the company's liability at roughly $43.6 million.
00:37 It estimates that the vessel itself is valued up at $90 million and was owed over $1.1 million
00:44 in income from freight. The estimate also deducts two major expenses, at least $28 million in repair
00:51 costs and at least $19.5 million in salvage costs. The company's filed under a pre-Civil
00:56 War provision of an 1851 maritime law that allows them to seek to limit their liability to the value
01:03 of the vessel's remains after a casualty. The owner of the Titanic also requested the protections of
01:08 the lot after its ship sank in 1912. Experts say the cost to rebuild the collapsed bridge could be
01:14 at least $400 million or as much as twice that, depending on the new design.