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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

#101

Post by lotsofpulp »

RobotToaster wrote: post #92
MichaelZuo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a broke drunk driver knocks a packed school bus off a cliff, that could easily be 600 million dollars worth of medical bills, if all the kids survive but become permanently disabled. And nearly all of it would have to be covered in the end by the taxpayer. No ‘side quest’ needed, just a few seconds worth of bad decision making.

The more disturbing part is, it would be less expensive if they all died.

How is that disturbing? It takes far fewer hours of labor to deal with a death than to provide lifelong healthcare.

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

#102

Post by gtirloni »

bluelightning2k wrote: post #96
Y_Y wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 public…

Problem with this: an individual betting shop pays out, the sales lift is shared among the entire industry. Concentrated downside, distributed upside. I doubt the individual bookie is happy.

I'm not familiar with betting in general but is there even a bookie this days? Or is that a company (one of the thousands flooding social media with ads lately)?

It seems, like in other industries, being large helps to weather out such rare events.

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

#103

Post by RobotToaster »

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…

Most ports use harbour pilots, so you couldn't just drive a ship into a bridge or other structure and claim it's an accident, but it seems like an easy accident to create (oops, steering broke).

If the ship simply refuses to let the pilot board though, so the port authorities know something is wrong, once it's in port and on route, what do you do? Even if you get the military to blow it up you've got a massive sunk hulk blocking your port.

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

#104

Post by bluelightning2k »

molyss wrote: post #68
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…

I’ll play with you: It might not be such a bad thing to increase cost of trans-oceanic transportation. Right now we’re shipping stuff that makes little sense no to produce locally simply because (cost of overseas labor + cost of transportation) Alternatively, I’d suggest that the premiums might not increase that much. Cost of insurance would be (cost of a claimable event)*(probability of such event). I’d hope the lat…

Great comment. Made me pause to think

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

#105

Post by dmurray »

Y_Y wrote: post #86
AdamN wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 public…

The odds did tighten up after Leicester won the Premier League though. You couldn't get 5000-1 on say Watford winning in 2016-17, the best odds IIRC were more like 500-1.

It seemed like bookies really did adjust their expectations or their risk appetite for long-tail events in this market. And they were probably correct to do so.

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

#106

Post by gtirloni »

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.

The captain can be fired, sure. Pay anything? Extremely unlikely. The liability for accidents stops at the company, unless there was a clear intent from the captain to cause the disaster but now we're in criminal court.

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

#107

Post by RobotToaster »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #101
RobotToaster wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more disturbing part is, it would be less expensive if they all died.

How is that disturbing? It takes far fewer hours of labor to deal with a death than to provide lifelong healthcare.

Because it creates a potential financial incentive to make sure they die.

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

#108

Post by lotsofpulp »

keepamovin wrote: post #42
idbehold wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But there are a million times more “sedan” cars than boats, traveling a million more miles.

An 18 and a 78 year old just killed two different sets of four people a couple weeks ago in SF and near Seattle. The 18 year old totaled his 3rd car in less than a year driving far above the speed limit.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/san-francisco-medi...

https://komonews.com/news/local/renton-deadly-multi-vehicle-...

Edit: to respond to below, it depends what you count as damage. Do you count all the deaths and injuries of all auto vehicles? There are 40k+ deaths and many more injuries per year in the US. How about the effect of car centric designs on kids not being able to roam around neighborhoods? Of course, it all gets abstract very quickly, since you also have to start comparing benefits, but there are very large systemic effects (and just the same with huge container ships of course).

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

#109

Post by throwup238 »

saalweachter wrote: post #75
rich_sasha wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably needs to be earthquake-proof too, which maybe it doesn't in Baltimore.

I suspect the winning bridge design in Baltimore is going to include massive starlings, beyond what is normal, or some other mitigation factor for the last disaster. So maybe earthquake-proofing is a fair comparison, cost-wise.

They’re just going to put more dolphins around the pylons. They had a few already but they were poorly placed and had an opening a container ship could slip through.

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

#110

Post by bluelightning2k »

There's a lot of excellent discussion in the comments on who should ultimately pay.

One interesting aspect: if insurance gets too high, it incentivises corporations themselves to be the insurer. I mean the literal corporate limited liability.

Would they not be incentivised to put each major asset into its own corporation, and in the event of a major loss that corporation becomes bankrupt?

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