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Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

mdd.uscourts.gov

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Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#41

Post by swores »

keepamovin wrote: post #17

It’s amazing that the captain of such a large vehicle has through the results of their choices the capability to do so much harm

To be clear, I fully believe the official statements that this crash was accidental - putting that up front to avoid seeming like I believe any of the nonsense conspiracy theories that came out about the accident.

But if you were someone like Russia or Iran who wanted to financially hurt the US (or any other country - and, equally feasible for the CIA or Mossad or whomever to use it as tactic to financially harm any enemy country with a significant port; or a terrorist group wanting to kill people seems less likely but not impossible) - wouldn't you be having that same thought now?

Secret services of various countries surely wouldn't find it hard to plant agents in shipping companies who end up captaining huge container ships around the world if they wanted to, and there's probably enough low-security situations for the boat when docked that gaining physical access (through spies taking engineer jobs or through sneaking onboard at a quiet time) could maybe allow some sort of sabotage equivalent to partially cutting the break lines on a car, which could be planned to cause problems roughly the right number of minutes after a ship leaves port to have the highest chance of impact.

If your goal is hurting a country financially rather than murderously, and you want an illegal way to do it that's completely deniable and even looks accidental, I'm not sure how many better options there would be?

I hope I'm wrong and it wouldn't be as easy as I'm imagining for any major country to place someone they trust (but won't be linked to them / suspected) into a career leading to being a captain on these ships...

(It might not even be limited to state actors - it's not unprecedented for a business executive to be a psychopath willing to commit crimes to boost their business, what's to stop the CEO or owner of a port, or a toll bridge, or a construction company from bribing a ship's captain with $20M dollars to take a port or bridge out of action, even a brief closure could be worth enough money to alternative locations and/or companies hired to fix it to make such a huge amount more money that a huge bribe would still make it wildly profitable. Obviously most companies won't have people specialised in committing this type of crime, so it wouldn't be easy to find the right captain who'd accept a bribe for that, yet alone do it without getting caught, but the captain could maybe create a fake medical emergency to cover their "mistake", etc... hopefully it's such a big criminal risk, and hard enough to do, that there wont be any crossover between the hopefully low number of psychopaths in positions of major corporate power and people who could pull it off if they wanted to.)

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#42

Post by keepamovin »

idbehold wrote: post #37
keepamovin wrote: post #17

It’s amazing that the captain of such a large vehicle has through the results of their choices the capability to do so much harm

Now consider all the people driving around in their cars everyday.

Right, but I think it would be quite the engineering challenge — or, ‘evil genius side quest’, whatever you wanna call it disturbingly — to cause $600 million worth of damage with a sedan car. Tho, YMMV, that’s just me.

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#43

Post by keepamovin »

swores wrote: post #41
keepamovin wrote: post #17

It’s amazing that the captain of such a large vehicle has through the results of their choices the capability to do so much harm

To be clear, I fully believe the official statements that this crash was accidental - putting that up front to avoid seeming like I believe any of the nonsense conspiracy theories that came out about the accident. But if you were someone like Russia or Iran who wanted to financially hurt the US (or any other country - and, equally feasible for the CIA or Mossad or whomever to use it as tactic to financially harm any…

No, I completely believe this was just some mechanical Newtonian inadequacy that was accidental. However, I’ve never considered the possibility of sabotage, but now that you mention it holy fuck yes that must be a possible threat vector.

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#44

Post by proteal »

baq wrote: post #6

Some helpful context: https://www.ft.com/content/c44306cc-6057-4ca3-923d-d67d09676...

Yes - this is great additional information. Here's some additional context around the article. Lloyd's of London is the original insurance company. They work in a syndicate structure, where the various other commercial insurance companies (think AIG, AXA XL, Starr, etc) all work together to share risks using their domestic balance sheets. I'm simplifying a lot here, but the insurance policies covering the various entities are stitched together like a quilt. No overlap and when assembled you're fully covered! For example, one insurance company may say they will cover the first $10M of a claim, another might share the next $10M of coverage with a few other companies, etc. They do this to limit their losses on a program. It's a lot more manageable to pay out only a small share of the claim than it is to pay the entire thing. By doing it like this, the brokers build out an insurance program for the covered entity that pulls in capital from across the globe in a very cost-effective way. It also has the added benefit of not stressing any one insurance company too badly.

What Neal (Lloyd's boss) is saying is "hey guys, we know we are all hosed here. It's gonna be an easy billion, probably more. Just because you're only expected to pay claims above $100M, you're certainly going to have to pay out. Let's not be knobs and pay this claim quickly to get the port back on their feet again"

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#45

Post by noisy_boy »

nashashmi wrote: post #15
gbil wrote: post #3

I stopped reading at point 13 >13. The Casualty was not due to any fault, neglect, or want of care on the part of Petitioners, the Vessel, or any persons or entities for whose acts Petitioners may be responsible. This comes out of nowhere and they base everything on this statement! Amazing

There was no fault neglect or want of care. The engine failed. The ship was out of control. It was not bad maneuvering. It was not sleeping on the wheel. It was not want of care (it was piloted by a harbor pilot).

A bit premature to declare so, don't you think? What if it comes out that corners were cut regarding engine maintenance or something along those lines?

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#46

Post by keepamovin »

flandish wrote: post #38
keepamovin wrote: post #17

It’s amazing that the captain of such a large vehicle has through the results of their choices the capability to do so much harm

Where was this his choice?

I, sir, am not saying it was. Yet pointing out how it could be, In some hypothetical past or future scenario, a reality worth considering

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#47

Post by jryb »

nashashmi wrote: post #15
gbil wrote: post #3

I stopped reading at point 13 >13. The Casualty was not due to any fault, neglect, or want of care on the part of Petitioners, the Vessel, or any persons or entities for whose acts Petitioners may be responsible. This comes out of nowhere and they base everything on this statement! Amazing

There was no fault neglect or want of care. The engine failed. The ship was out of control. It was not bad maneuvering. It was not sleeping on the wheel. It was not want of care (it was piloted by a harbor pilot).

The engine failing isn't some random, unlucky event. Regular maintenance and inspection should prevent this. Whenever this happens to an airplane it's considered negligence - there's no reason why we shouldn't have the same standards for ships.

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#48

Post by defrost »

frankharv wrote: post #24
eastbound wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope not. I was irresponsible to let ships pass a dozen times a day through a flimsy contraption that could collapse at the first nudge. This risk was unacceptable. Unacceptable! The people of Baltimore have benefited for years of a port facility literally downtown, which is practically the same thing as building houses in a flood zone. Should have never been permitted! I hope “We The People” accepts the responsibi…

"We The People" didn't try and operate a vessel with containers stacked so high its ridiculous. Where were the tugboats? Bridges are not bumper cars. You cannot hit them. To call it flimsy when the bridge carried 34,000 cars a day is silly. I should not pay for gross misconduct. Why did the boat leave the pier with a faulty engine?

The reality is complicated, there are liability arguments on both sides and a deal to be struck that'll land most costs on one party over another.

* Where were the tugboats?

* Why did the boat leave the pier with a faulty engine?

The ship was still within harbour waters under the control of local harbour pilots. They didn't have tugboats within near distance and they took the engine status on good faith.

As a risk management exercise if you run a harbour with high traffic then eventually a ship will have an engine|rudder|other failure within harbour waters and bridges will be struck with glancing to major blows.

It's an older bridge built before ship sizes grew, was the harbour infrastructure lagging behind the nature of the traffic it purported to serve?

Other harbours have pylons protected with substantial barriers, other harbours ban traffic | workers on cross harbour bridges when ships move (eg: Tasmania after they had a ship hit a bridge).

The ship maintainance was very likely at fault, the harbour should have mitigation plans against ship faults, etc.

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#49

Post by dagw »

sverhagen wrote: post #35
rkrzr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that the actual cost to rebuild the bridge will be far higher than that. Initial estimates of large public works projects are virtually always too low, and actual costs can easily be 5-10 times higher. There is a great book about this phenomenon (and how to avoid it) by Brent Flyvbjerg called "How Big Things Get Done".

What helps push down prices of bridges, is to not build them in US. Or at least, it always strikes me how outlandishly expensive infrastructure projects are in the US (for me coming from Europe, originally).

outlandishly expensive infrastructure projects are in the US

As someone in Europe I wonder where this notion comes from. Just about every major (and several minor) infrastructure project I can remember in my lifetime, in any of the European cities I've live in, has been both late and wildly over budget

Re: Dali owner file petition to cap liability in Baltimore bridge collapse at $43.7M

#50

Post by SideQuark »

blackbear_ wrote: post #5

Privatize the profits and socialize the losses, here we go again.

The profits are also socialized, in that a huge chunk of US people are hurt financially when the bridge goes down, illustrating how most of us benefit from having stable flow of goods and services.

If you (and millions of others) did not benefit from having this bridge, then you (and millions of others) would not now have lower quality of life when it fails.

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