City hires lawyers following bridge collapse
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Monday that the city had hired attorneys to pursue legal action against the operators of the cargo vessel that struck and toppled the Francis Scott Key Bridge last month, the same day the FBI confirmed it had opened a criminal probe.
In a statement, Scott said the city had hired Philadelphia law firm Saltz Mongeluzzi Bendesky, which specializes in personal injury suits, and DiCello Levitt, a Chicago-based firm that specializes in civil and human rights litigation and commercial, environmental, and class-action lawsuits. Sara Gross, the city Office of Law’s chief of affirmative litigation, will also serve on the legal team.
Six construction workers died in the March 26 incident, which temporarily shut much of the Port of Baltimore, idling 15,000 port workers and impacting nearby businesses. Authorities have since begun salvaging the ship, which remains stalled in the Patapsco River, weighed down by parts of the structure. Federal officials have pledged to finance the cleanup, and authorities expect the port to fully reopen by the end of May.
The FBI also confirmed Monday that its agents had searched the ship, but it declined to comment further.
Scott said the city’s purpose in hiring the firms was to “hold the wrongdoers responsible and to mitigate the immediate and longterm harm caused to Baltimore City residents.”
The Singapore-flagged ship Dali was minutes into a monthlong journey to Sri Lanka when it collided with the bridge shortly before 1:30 a.m. March 26. Scott said the two firms would take “decisive action” against the Dali’s owner, Grace Ocean Private Limited; its manager, Synergy Marine; and its charterer, Maersk, citing the former two firms’ April 1 petition to limit their legal liability.
A Maersk spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Darrell Wilson, a spokesperson representing Synergy and Grace Ocean, declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations.
“We are continuing to do everything in our power to support everyone impacted here and will continue to recognize the human impact this event has had,” Scott said in a news release. “Part of that work needs to be seeking recourse from those who may potentially be responsible, and with the ship’s owner filing a petition to limit its liability mere days after the incident, we need to act equally as quickly to protect the City’s interests.”
Adam Levitt, of the firm DiCello Levitt, said they will bring “significant” economic and environmental loss claims on behalf of the city government and city residents in their roles in what is believed to be one of the largest-ever maritime disasters.
“We need to hold these entities accountable for the emotional toll and the substantial financial losses that the City of Baltimore and its residents are facing,” Levitt said.
The Office of Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown is also soliciting outside legal counsel to pursue action against the Dali.
Brown said Monday that his office will consider pursuing “multiple defendants” to help recoup costs for salvaging, recovery, and damages to the environmental and natural resources.
“We’re seeing numbers from $500 million to over $1 billion to replace [the bridge],” he said. “Multiple individuals or entities contributed to that collision or allision between the ship and the bridge. As chief legal officer of the state, my responsibility is to file actions to protect the interests of the state, to recover for that damage.”
He declined to say whether his office had been communicating with criminal investigators.
“I suspect there will be even more investigations from different angles, looking at a variety of things,” he said. “Everything from who’s liable, whether it’s criminally or civilly, and how do we make things better? Safer? So something like this doesn’t happen again.”