When the container ship Dali destroyed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 26, the bridge’s owner — the state of Maryland — needed emergency legal representation.
The next day, state officials asked a Hampton Roads law firm to help out.
Chris Abel and David Sump — maritime attorneys with the Norfolk law firm Willcox & Savage — had been representing Maryland for more than a year in the case of a barge that crashed into a state-owned bridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
The Dali’s crash was far more spectacular in scale — with exponentially more money at stake. But “at a very basic level,” Abel said, both accidents involved vessels crashing into state bridges, with the same 19th century maritime law at issue.
The Norfolk law partners — former Coast Guard officers who met at the Coast Guard Academy in 1975 — quickly agreed to take on the Maryland work.
“It’s always exciting where you read about something in the paper and then the phone rings,” Abel said. “Everyone in America, or probably in the world, knew that this tragedy happened when they woke up the morning of March 26. The fact that within a day or so we were getting a call and an opportunity to have a role, that was kind of exciting.”
Starting in early April and running through most of May, Abel, 66, of York County, and Sump, 67, of Chesapeake — together with younger Willcox & Savage lawyer Michael Collett — spent “hundreds” of hours representing Maryland in the Key Bridge case.
“Our job in the early going was to represent the state’s interest,” Abel said. “To advise the state of its legal rights and options.”
According to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board, a crewman on the Dali accidentally tripped an electrical circuit breaker on the ship on March 26 — causing the 984-foot container ship to lose power and crash into the Key Bridge’s support structure.
Only five days after the bridge’s collapse, the Dali’s owner and operator — Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and the Synergy Marine Group — filed a petition in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to limit their legal exposure.
They did so under the Shipowner’s Limitation of Liability Act, an 1851 law that caps a ship owner’s liability from a disaster to the total value of the ship and its cargo after the accident.
If a ship is destroyed, for example, the ship owner would have no liability at all. In its court filing in the Key Bridge case, Grace and Synergy pegged the value of the ship at $90 million before the collision and $43 million afterward.
“If you’re Grace Ocean and if you’re Synergy, you’re certainly hoping that you get to make that stick, because their exposure would never be greater than that $43 million,” Abel said. “And obviously you’ve got a bunch of folks fighting for it.”
But Maryland and other claimants are expected to challenge Grace Ocean’s and Synergy’s right to limit its liability under the 1851 law. One such challenge, for example, could be that the ship owner was negligent in its actions — such as not adequately training its crew — so doesn’t deserve such protections.
“If there’s some blame that goes back to the owner, that should be enough to break through the limitation,” Abel said.
All reimbursement claims must be filed with the Baltimore federal court by Sept. 24.
There’s expected to be claims from family members of the six bridge construction workers killed when they fell into the Patapsco River in the crash, and from two other workers who were injured.
Moreover, Abel said there will be a claim from the construction company for equipment lost, a claim from the federal government for clearing the shipping channel, and a claim from the city of Baltimore that it had “a proprietary interest” in the bridge, among several others.
Maryland will surely have a large claim — that “Hey, that was our bridge that you knocked down” and that the crossing’s collapse has led to millions of dollars in lost toll revenues, Abel said. The state will clearly need all the money it can get, given that the cost to replace the Francis Scott Key Bridge could run into the billions of dollars.
But under existing law, Abel said, Maryland can get reimbursed only for the value of the 47-year-old bridge at the time of the accident — not the cost of building a new one with all the bells and whistles.
“It’s gonna cost a lot of money,” Abel said. “But the way the law is, you don’t get a new bridge for an old one … The fight is going to be over the fair value of the bridge that was destroyed.”
During the Norfolk attorneys’ representation of the state of Maryland between April through about May 17, the lawyers had conversations and meetings with attorneys for the ship and others.
There were phone calls with the insurance company for the bridge. There was a meeting between Abel, a Justice Department lawyer and the insurance company attorney on the Dali itself.
And when pieces of the bridge floated to shore, Abel and Sump needed to ensure that everyone had an equal chance “to see if there was anything to be gained from the debris that was brought up,” Abel said. “We arranged for the inspection protocols to ensure that evidence is preserved.”
The Norfolk law firm did not get to keep the legal representation long term.
Under state law, Maryland officials needed to go through a formal bidding process to hire lawyers to deal with the Key Bridge accident’s aftermath.
Dozens of proposals were submitted involving more than 60 law firms.
Though Willcox & Savage and its Maryland law firm partner submitted a bid — and were among the finalists — state officials instead selected a consortium of five firms for the work.
But in announcing the selection of the consortium, Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown thanked the Norfolk law firm for its efforts on about eight weeks of work.
“I offer thanks to Willcox & Savage … for assisting on an interim basis and providing critical advice as we proceeded with our competitive selection process,” Brown wrote. “Because of its immediate availability and diligence, we were able to jumpstart our efforts to protect the state’s interests from ‘Day 1.'”
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
