The city said the companies’ effort to limit responsibility for the vessel and the cargo’s value to $43.6 million is “substantially less than the amount that will be claimed for losses and damages” arising out of the Dali’s collision with the Key Bridge.
The owners of the Dali cargo ship were negligent and should be held fully liable for the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which killed six people, the city of Baltimore said in court filings Monday.
In response to the vessel owners’ petition filed in U.S. District Court this month seeking to limit their liability, Mayor Brandon Scott and the Baltimore City Council argued Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Pte Ltd. “put a clearly unseaworthy vessel into the water," and they called the companies’ actions “grossly and potentially criminally negligent.”
The city of Baltimore is demanding a jury trial, saying the companies’ effort to limit responsibility for the vessel and the cargo’s value at $43.6 million is “substantially less than the amount that will be claimed for losses and damages arising out of the Dali’s allision [collision] with the Key Bridge.”
Relevant to the article is the US Limitation of Liability Act of 1851. This law allows a company to limit their total liability to the value of the ship and cargo. It’s a leftover from a different age where the US Government was trying to promote trade. Today, it’s used by companies to shirk liability when their greed and lack of care leads to death and destruction.
Well is it still legal and on the books? Has it ever been successfully ignored? Seems like the feds failure to remove the law.
The criminal negligence should still happen, at least. I wonder if the captain ever told the company execs that the ship wasn’t seaworthy. I’m sure it will just all fall back to the captain, though. The rich people never get in trouble for quasi-accidentally killing people.
That law does not cover the owners if we can prove they put an unseaworthy vessel to work and we can prove they knew of its unseaworthiness