Lawsuit blames Dali shipbuilder for power failure that led to collision with Baltimore’s Key Bridge

By Mike Hellgren, Christian Olaniran

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    BALTIMORE, Maryland (WJZ) — The owner and operator of the Dali, the cargo ship that collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore on March 26, 2024, are suing the vessel’s shipbuilder, alleging that defective electrical equipment caused a power failure before the deadly crash.

The bridge collapse killed six construction workers and temporarily halted operations at the Port of Baltimore.

In a lawsuit filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Grace Ocean Private Limited, the Dali’s owner, and Synergy Marine Private Limited, its manager, claim the ship had a simple but dangerous defect that caused the electrical system to lose power.

The lawsuit alleges that HD Hyundai Heavy Industries of South Korea designed and installed a faulty switchboard that led to repeated electrical failures on board.

On the massive Dali cargo ship, a single signal wire—Node 381—led to the catastrophic power failure of the Dali, according to a new lawsuit WJZ Investigates reviewed.

The Dali’s owner, Grace Ocean Private Limited, and its operator, Synergy Marine, are suing Hyundai Heavy Industries, which built the Dali.

“Hyundai Heavy Industries defectively designed the switchboard,” the lawsuit states.

It also claims “the signal wire was not designed to remain securely connected to the terminal block” and a “design defect caused the switchboard and the vessel to be unreasonably dangerous. As a result… the [Dali] suffered a power outage that led to the allision with the Key Bridge.”

“I suspect there are expert witnesses in the background who hold the belief that this is what caused the incident, and equally, I suspect there will be expert witnesses who will disagree with that assumption and that’s what we call a battle of the experts ultimately,” said John Fulweiler, a maritime attorney unaffiliated this case who has decades of experience.

According to the lawsuit, Hyundai placed a thick, white label too close to the end of the cable, causing it to come loose. That opened a circuit breaker and caused the initial loss of power to the switchboard.

The other cable has no such label, and the picture provided in the lawsuit shows it fitting more deeply into the terminal block, making it less likely to come loose.

The Dali was 9 years old at the time of the tragedy, which could make proving Hyundai was negligent an uphill battle.

“It’s kind of like your car inspection. You have a certain timeframe within which these vessels are inspected. I think those are going to be critical to understand what the extent of the inspections, the frequency of the inspections, and what modifications or repairs, if any, were done to this panel where this node was located,” Fulweiler said.

It is one of several ongoing legal actions on one of the biggest, most complex maritime cases in U.S. history

“You’ve got hundreds of interests aboard that vessel. You’ve got the manufacturer. You’ve got crew member interests. I am not surprised at all that this litigation is developing the way it is, and I would expect it will continue to expand for a while,” Fulweiler said. “At the end of the day, it’s all in the interests of trying to find the truth.”

WJZ Investigates reached out to Hyundai Heavy Industries for comment, and has not heard back.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Dali lost power four times in less than 12 hours before colliding with the bridge.

The first power loss occurred on March 25 during in-port maintenance, roughly 10 hours before the ship departed from Baltimore. Power was restored, but a second in-port blackout followed soon after, the NTSB said in a March 2025 report.

The Dali left the Seagirt Marine Terminal shortly after 12:30 a.m. on March 26, headed for Colombo, Sri Lanka, with 4,680 containers. The captain reported the vessel was in “good working order,” and it was being assisted by two tugboats.

However, the ship lost electrical power again mid-transit. The main propulsion diesel engine shut down automatically after the pumps lost power, stopping the vessel’s propeller. Although the crew briefly restored power, a fourth and final blackout occurred moments later.

Without electrical power, the ship lost steering capability and struck the bridge, the lawsuit alleges.

NTSB investigators confirmed that “an interruption in the control circuit” tied to the main breakers led to the initial power failure.

A complex legal landscape has emerged in the wake of the disaster. Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine face dozens of lawsuits related to the collapse.

In September 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a $100 million lawsuit against the companies, accusing them of knowingly sending a malfunctioning vessel into U.S. waters and failing to disclose the ship’s problems.

More than 20 other parties, including survivors, families of the victims, local residents, and businesses, filed notices in May of their intent to sue the state of Maryland. The plaintiffs allege that the Maryland Transportation Authority failed to assess or mitigate the risk of a bridge collapse.

Grace Ocean and Synergy previously sought to limit their liability to $43.6 million, citing the value of the ship and its cargo.

Last week, the governor and other Maryland officials toured the demolition work at the site of the bridge collapse. They said progress is on track to remove what is left of the existing structures and construction can move forward on the new bridge, which is several hundred feet to the east.

Earlier this year, the National Transportation Safety Board criticized the state for failing to assess the vulnerability of both the Key Bridge and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to being struck by a large ship and not doing more to protect them.

“MDTA would’ve known the risk, and could have taken action to safeguard the Key Bridge,” NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said in a March news conference. “Had they done that, the collapse could have been prevented.”

The governor put the blame squarely on the Dali. That massive vessel’s power failure put it on a collision course with one of the Key Bridge’s main supports.

“To be clear, the tragedy of the Key Bridge happened because we had a ship that was the size of three football fields that plowed into a bridge—that even the former secretary of transportation has indicated—there’s hardly a structure in the country that could’ve survived that kind of impact of that kind of size,” Governor Wes Moore said. “Of course, we are now taking action, and we are putting millions of dollars from a state perspective around protection of our bridges, but every single bridge in the state of Maryland is up to code, and every single person knows there is safety in traveling around Maryland’s roadways.”

The estimated cost of the replacement bridge is just under $2 billion.

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