The Baltimore City Council is working to ensure that the city can receive funds it may win in a lawsuit against Grace Ocean Private, the company that owns the ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The council is considering legislation that will allow the city to take in funds it may win from legal action against the company for a variety of reasons including loss of tax revenue, means of producing income or natural resources. It also allows the city to reap funds from remediating damage from the collision, and from activities that may have been canceled or delayed.
That could include taxes from businesses that were impacted, the closure of the port, traffic and many other situations that the Key Bridge closure has put a burden on the city.
“The goal of this piece of legislation, and certainly the goal is to recover every piece of economic loss that can be attributable to this action,” said Daniel Schwartz, senior counsel at DiCello Levitt, which is representing Baltimore. “That is beyond just a first responder appearing the day that this occurred. It reverberates throughout the city’s economy.”
The bill gives the city solicitor certain powers to establish rules and regulations to allow Baltimore to follow through with the recovery.
The legislation received favorable reports from the city’s health department and department of transportation.
“The bill would facilitate the city’s efforts to recoup certain costs associated with the collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge over the Patapsco River,” Baltimore DOT wrote in its favorable report. “The bridge collapse has caused a large volume of traffic to be rerouted through city streets, primarily corridors in South Baltimore. The department is collaborating with partners like the Baltimore Metropolitan Council to capture the full extent of traffic impacts on the city’s roadways.”
The economic impact of the Key Bridge collapse could be a daunting number. The Port of Baltimore alone produces $400 million in tax revenue a year, according to the Maryland Chamber of Commerce.
Around the time of the collapse, Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) estimated the economic impact at about $15 million a day.
While Baltimore has not set a number for how much damages it will sue for, but it could be in the multiple billions of dollars, according to some estimates.
Meanwhile, Baltimore is in litigation with Grace Ocean.
The city is asking the court to overlook an 1851 maritime law that caps ship owner responsibility for accidents at about $44 million because of negligence on the part of the company.
The city says it is due payment for the replacement of the bridge, the costs of the obstruction to the river, costs for the loss of tax revenue, funds for the cleanup and money for the nuisance suffered by the residents of Baltimore.
“The Port of Baltimore was no stranger to large freighters like the Dali,” the lawyers representing Baltimore wrote in the filing. “For more than four decades, cargo ships made thousands of trips every year under the Key Bridge without incident. There was nothing about March 26, 2024 that should have changed that. But Petitioners, Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Pte Ltd saw fit to put a clearly unseaworthy vessel into the water.”
Other legislative bodies are also springing into action to recoup funds regarding the rebuild of the bridge.
Federal lawmakers are introducing legislation that could make Grace Ocean liable for up to $854 million in damages to the federal government.
The Justice for Victims of Foreign Vessel Accidents Act would hold owners of foreign-flagged vessels accountable for up to ten times the value of the ship and its cargo after an accident.
“If the foreign owners of the cargo vessel that took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore think they can leave American taxpayers holding the bag, I have a message for them: you broke it, you bought it,” Garamendi said in a statement. “Access to America’s ports and our consumers is a privilege, not a right. If the foreign owners of the Dali want to keep that privilege, they can break out their checkbooks, call their insurance company, and pay their fair share of the bridge replacement costs and compensation to the families of the six workers who died tragically that day.”
The Key Bridge replacement is expected to cost between $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority.
The agency is currently looking for designers for the new bridge and has a goal of finishing the bridge by fall of 2028.
