Justice Department reaches $100 million settlement with two companies in Baltimore bridge collapse

By Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department has reached a settlement for more than $100 million with the two corporations that owned and operated the container ship that destroyed Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.

As part of the settlement, Grace Ocean Private Limited and Synergy Marine Private Limited – two Singaporean companies – will pay nearly $102 million to resolve a civil claim alleging that the companies’ cost-cutting and negligence in the ship’s maintenance led to the disastrous collision.

The settlement comes more than six months after the 213-million-pound cargo vessel lost power and slammed into the bridge, resulting in the deaths of six construction workers.

The city of Baltimore has filed its own claim against the two companies, and families of three of the victims have also said they intend to sue. Additionally, CNN has reported that the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into whether the ship’s crew failed to report an earlier issue that delayed their departure.

When the Justice Department filed its civil lawsuit last month, it said the hefty financial penalty would cover the costs of the monthslong effort to clear the wreckage — about 50,000 tons of steel, concrete and asphalt — from the water so that the Port of Baltimore could reopen.

The payment stemming from Thursday’s settlement will go to the US Treasury and to the budgets of several federal agencies directly affected by the crash or involved in the response, the Justice Department said Thursday. It will not cover any damages for the reconstruction of the bridge, the department said.

“Nearly seven months after one of the worst transportation disasters in recent memory, which claimed six lives and caused untold damage, we have reached an important milestone with today’s settlement,” Benjamin Mizer, the Justice Department’s principal deputy associate attorney general, said in a statement.

The settlement “ensures that the costs of the federal government’s cleanup efforts in the Fort McHenry Channel are borne by Grace Ocean and Synergy and not the American taxpayer,” Mizer added.

The Port of Baltimore shipping channel – one of the nation’s largest for international cargo and a major hub for vehicles, containers and commodities – reopened in June. The Key Bridge was used by 30,000 motorists every day before the collapse.

In its filing last month, the Justice Department said that the “tragedy was entirely avoidable,” pointing to alleged failures in the ship’s infrastructure.

Prosecutors wrote that, instead of fixing longstanding problems with their electrical transformer, the companies “jury-rigged their ship” with makeshift braces that repeatedly broke. And when those electrical transformers broke the night of the bridge collapse, a backup transformer should have restored power “within just a few seconds” but that safety feature had been “recklessly disabled,” they alleged.

Prosecutors also noted in their filing that the ship had lost power one day before the collapse, but that the outage was never reported to the Coast Guard as required by law.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.

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