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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

#141

Post by anonu »

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.

https://www.igpandi.org/reinsurance/

Look at the graphic at the bottom of that link. Basically, there are multiple levels of insurance in the P&I space (property and indemnity insurance common in marine insurance). Insurance companies purchase their own insurance, aka reinsurance. The levels of reinsurance can be multiple layers deep. Insurance companies form clubs to spread out the risk to multiple entities.

This stuff will be tied up in claims and courts for years to come.

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

#142

Post by anonu »

edgineer wrote: post #13

Rebuild cost: $600m [0] I do hope We the People have zealous advocates. [0] https://news.sky.com/story/baltimore-trade-implications-from...

Given that there is sufficient capacity to route vehicle traffic to different paths, there is time to measure and plan: I would think people would look to a tunnel instead of a bridge in any rebuild of that route.

There is a tunnel further south in the Chesapeake Bay where there are navy/military facilities that cannot risk being blocked by falling bridges.

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

#143

Post by toomuchtodo »

vr46 wrote: post #133
ethagknight wrote: post #128

Is there not some responsibility on the US govt to reasonably protect its infrastructure in a common maritime path? The harbor long preceded the bridge, and when the bridge was constructed, the harbor had massive container ships moving in and out. No dolphins or starlings around a single point of failure for an entire bridge span? Whole a bridge collapse like this is rare, bridge strikes are not uncommon. It seems li…

"I mean, how hard could it be?" It's an incredibly rare event. Retro-fitting things in the water is crazy expensive. Somebody estimated that the force hitting the bridge was 30 Million Pounds. That's a lot of protection needed.

The Florida Sunshine Skyway bridge uses concrete “dolphins” to protect in water support systems, after a similar catastrophic cargo ship collision event.

https://maritime-executive.com/article/baltimore-bridge-coll...

https://www.structuremag.org/?p=20417

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

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

#144

Post by htrp »

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.

Most "individual betting shops" are a sales agent where the actual "book" is run through bet365/paddypower (at least the ones aboveboard in the UK).

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

#145

Post by sofixa »

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

Because it's true. Projects in Europe, especially big ones, often go over budget and are late. There are extremes like Berlin Brandenburg, but usually the price increase is in the order of 20-40%, which isn't too bad considering the complexity, and there's still good results in exchange. (E.g. Grand Paris Express will cost 50% more than originally planned (35 vs 22 billion euros), take a few years more, but it will result in 200km of all new fully automated, mostly underground, metro lines which will be amazing)

In comparison, in the US and Canada big projects are absurd. Take the Second Avenue Subway in New York - it's projected to cost $6 billion for 2.4km of track (no, that's not a typo, 2.4 km of track, really).

The California HSR is costing multiple times what similar projects in other countries cost (estimated to cost upwards of $100 billion, up from the original estimate of $40 billion for the first phase of 840 km; the Turin - Lyon high speed railway in more challenging terrain, including the longest rail tunnel in the world, is projected to cost around 25 billion euros for 270km, 1/4 of the price for 1/3 of the distance).

In fact there are lots of people and publications trying to understand why costs in US and Canada are so absurd compared to anywhere else in the world:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7b5mn/a-dollar100-billion-l...

https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs...

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184420745/why-building-publi...

https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/28/why-does-transit-infr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzcy7Usw8y8

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

#146

Post by deepsun »

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…

But you also want to count where the $600M go to. Yes, US taxpayers pay for it eventually, but they pay it to some other taxpayers (assuming the developers also US-based). So the money get back to US economy in the end.

Granted it's still bad for the economy, but just counting money is not enough. E.g. spending huge money on Hoover dam and Golden Gate bridge was good for the economy at the time.

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

#147

Post by alistairSH »

ethagknight wrote: post #128

Is there not some responsibility on the US govt to reasonably protect its infrastructure in a common maritime path? The harbor long preceded the bridge, and when the bridge was constructed, the harbor had massive container ships moving in and out. No dolphins or starlings around a single point of failure for an entire bridge span? Whole a bridge collapse like this is rare, bridge strikes are not uncommon. It seems li…

The bridge opened in March 1977.

A cargo ship at that time would have maxed around 3000 TEU (pre-Panamax).

Dali is close to 3x that size at just shy of 10,000 TEU.

And Dali basically center-punched that bridge support. And swerved very close to the bridge. A dolphin might have mitigated a glancing blow, but I doubt it would have stopped a direct hit such as this.

I'm sure the replacement bridge will have more protection, for the optics if nothing else. But, we can't really afford to redesign bridges every time a larger ship is built.

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

#148

Post by nradov »

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.

Pretty much every large merchant ship already has insurance. The market is saturated and there's no way for sales to go up. Marine insurers might use this incident to justify increasing premiums, though.

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

#149

Post by whartung »

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 corollary is the scenes from the movie “The Grifters” where one aspect of Angelica Huston’s character is she goes to tracks to put large bets on long shots to lower the impact on the mobs illegal bookmaking system, in case the horse actually wins.

It’s not mentioned in the movie. I have to guess that they only do that if there is a large bet pending, rather doing it to all the long shot horses.

Some gambler dropping a 10k bet, and have her put $1k on the horse is enough to really rock the odds. Perhaps, mob accounting is not my specialty. And, of course, it’s just a movie.

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

#150

Post by alistairSH »

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…

eventually, the consumer over the long term, this could end up costing the tax payer more?

Hedging against loss is a cost of doing business. Theft is built into the pricing at grocery stores and other retailers. Why should shipping be different? Yes, the sums are MUCH larger, but the general point is the business should account for its costs as part of its budget.

This sounds like a variation of "too big to fail" - the answer may very well be require smaller/safer ships. That would cost more, but long term, might do a better job accounting for the costs of loss.

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