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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

#81

Post by AdamN »

proteal wrote: post #23
altacc wrote: post #2

I have wondered what the insurance structure for this is and how liable the vessel's owners and insurers are for damage to public infrastructure. Marine insurance is one of the oldest types of insurance and antique in some respects, with large vessels covered by several underwriting firms. So potentially this is a massive financial hit for multiple companies if there is not a limit on liability.

As a former property insurance broker whose clients had big claims ($100Mish) and worked around people who handled the real big claims ($1B+), I can't really tell you with any specificity of how this will play out. All I know is that it will be a huge mess, and the lawyers will argue in court for several years. Ultimately, someone will have to pay to rebuild the bridge. In the event of really big claims, it almost al…

My understanding is that the insurers like these situations - it makes it obvious how important good insurance is and sales go up. The individual impact seems large to the layperson but is within the models of the insurance and reinsurance companies over time.

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

#82

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

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?

> Where were the tugboats? Bridges are not bumper cars. You cannot hit them.

Through a bridges lifetime in a busy shipping lane you can expect it to get hit. Thus any reasonable bridge is designed with, or has barriers retrofitted to them.

It just US infrastructure lagging behind as is typical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)

https://www.drba.net/drba-proceeds-new-bridge-ship-collision...

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

#83

Post by proteal »

swores wrote: post #22

TLDR of the logic behind that sum for anyone else who wondered like I did: They claim the ship's value before the crash as $90M, and that estimated costs for salvage and repairs to the ship are $19.5M and $28M respectively, leaving the value of the ship now at $42.5M (points 15-17 in the main document). They then add the value of pending freight ($1.17M): "Petitioners offer an Interim Stipulation of Value in the amou…

An answer like this would need to refer to the policy provisions to really know, but I'm willing to bet the ship should is valued at Replacement Cost. Replacement Cost varies depending on the term of the policy, but the goal of the definition is to get the policyholder back to where they were before the accident (technical term is to indemnify the casualty). This definition typically looks like this: "We will pay the cost to replace a like kind and quality boat OR we will pay the cost to get your damaged boat back to operational state, whichever is cheaper for us." My guess is that the book value of the boat is $90M (what you would get if you sold the boat on the open market, representative of the present value of the asset's economic returns), but to actually build/repair that boat is cheaper. Insurance companies don't want to pay the book value because they aren't getting an economic return on the boat.

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

#84

Post by rightbyte »

cientifico wrote: post #65
proteal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former property insurance broker whose clients had big claims ($100Mish) and worked around people who handled the real big claims ($1B+), I can't really tell you with any specificity of how this will play out. All I know is that it will be a huge mess, and the lawyers will argue in court for several years. Ultimately, someone will have to pay to rebuild the bridge. In the event of really big claims, it almost al…

I can tell you how is going to play out. The people with less money for lawyers will be held liable. Normally the captain.

There was a pilot onboard, right?

If I remember correctly they made the ship steer of course quite sharply. If the pilot dropped anchor and made the ship do that they might be in error.

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

#85

Post by verisimi »

bilekas wrote: post #52

This is actually a really interesting case. Hear me out, a little bit of devil's advocate maybe.. If insurance company is forced to repay the whole cost of the rebuild, estimated it will cost lets say $600M. Tax payer is happy they're not paying via Federal taxes. But, shipping and logistics insurance companies start to ramp up their premiums and those fees are passed on to, eventually, the consumer over the long ter…

> If insurance company is forced to repay the whole cost of the rebuild, estimated it will cost lets say $600M. Tax payer is happy they're not paying via Federal taxes. But, shipping and logistics insurance companies start to ramp up their premiums and those fees are passed on to, eventually, the consumer over the long term, this could end up costing the tax payer more ?

Isn't this the point of insurance and specifically underwriters - that they aggregate the possible outcomes over a huge set of assets, with the expectation that sometimes they will have to pay out if an accident or whatever happens?

There should be no increase in anyone's premium. Though, from a marketing perspective, given the level of publicity that this event has gotten, perhaps people are primed for a raise - and this is a good time to do it!

Honestly, "insurance" sounds like an ideal area for a headless company. Its really only providing an aggregation of certain risks, so no individual company person is wiped out. The more assets it manages, the less risk they have, and the more the price of the insurance should drop.

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

#86

Post by Y_Y »

AdamN wrote: post #81
proteal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former property insurance broker whose clients had big claims ($100Mish) and worked around people who handled the real big claims ($1B+), I can't really tell you with any specificity of how this will play out. All I know is that it will be a huge mess, and the lawyers will argue in court for several years. Ultimately, someone will have to pay to rebuild the bridge. In the event of really big claims, it almost al…

My understanding is that the insurers like these situations - it makes it obvious how important good insurance is and sales go up. The individual impact seems large to the layperson but is within the models of the insurance and reinsurance companies over time.

There is an analogous situation in (e.g. sports) betting. Every now and then someone places a really long bet on something like Leicester winning the Premiership and then gets a collosal payout. Inevitably there's some naive speculation that the betting shop will be very unhappy with this. In reality theae u likely events happen relatively infrequently (often disproportionately to even their long odds) and the publicity from such an unlikely win more than makes up for the payout.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

cientifico wrote: post #65
proteal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former property insurance broker whose clients had big claims ($100Mish) and worked around people who handled the real big claims ($1B+), I can't really tell you with any specificity of how this will play out. All I know is that it will be a huge mess, and the lawyers will argue in court for several years. Ultimately, someone will have to pay to rebuild the bridge. In the event of really big claims, it almost al…

I can tell you how is going to play out. The people with less money for lawyers will be held liable. Normally the captain.

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by leereeves »

cientifico wrote: post #65
proteal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former property insurance broker whose clients had big claims ($100Mish) and worked around people who handled the real big claims ($1B+), I can't really tell you with any specificity of how this will play out. All I know is that it will be a huge mess, and the lawyers will argue in court for several years. Ultimately, someone will have to pay to rebuild the bridge. In the event of really big claims, it almost al…

I can tell you how is going to play out. The people with less money for lawyers will be held liable. Normally the captain.

Holding the captain liable would be like trying to get a blood transfusion for an elephant from a mosquito.

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

#89

Post by ftrobro »

dagw wrote: post #49
sverhagen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This train tunnel below Malmö in Sweden was finished in 2010 six months earlier than planned and at a cost 10% below budget.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Tunnel_(Malm%C3%B6)

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

#90

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

AdamN wrote: post #81
proteal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former property insurance broker whose clients had big claims ($100Mish) and worked around people who handled the real big claims ($1B+), I can't really tell you with any specificity of how this will play out. All I know is that it will be a huge mess, and the lawyers will argue in court for several years. Ultimately, someone will have to pay to rebuild the bridge. In the event of really big claims, it almost al…

My understanding is that the insurers like these situations - it makes it obvious how important good insurance is and sales go up. The individual impact seems large to the layperson but is within the models of the insurance and reinsurance companies over time.

Is it? The best "insurance" against this seems to be a rat's nest of sufficiently small LLCs which then conveniently go bankrupt when something big happens (losing only the assets in that LLC at that time). Imagine a shipping company where each ship is its own LLC. If the ship sinks, well too bad, the only meaningful asset that LLC had was the ship, oops.

I assume ships are required by law to have insurance before being allowed to go in certain places, to make sure damage they cause is covered. But that would make it hard to sell "better" insurance than the legal minimum when it comes to catastrophic claims.

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