Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown announced on May 12, 2026, that the state finalized a $2.25 billion civil settlement with Grace Ocean Private Limited, the owner of the container vessel M/V Dali, and Synergy Marine Pte Ltd, the ship's operator, resolving state claims arising from the March 2024 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore [1][3]. The settlement is among the largest civil recoveries in U.S. maritime disaster history [1].
The collapse occurred in the early morning hours of March 26, 2024, when the Dali, a Singapore-flagged container ship, struck a support pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after losing power and propulsion control. The bridge fell into the Patapsco River, killing six construction workers who were on the span at the time. The disaster severed one of the Baltimore region's primary freight corridors and triggered extensive environmental and economic damage assessments. Maryland's claims were brought on behalf of three state entities: the Maryland Transportation Authority, which owns and operates the bridge; the Maryland Port Administration; and the Maryland Department of the Environment [1][3]. The legal theories underlying the state's recovery encompassed maritime negligence, wrongful death, and environmental damage [3].
The settlement resolves all pending state civil claims against Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine [1]. It does not, however, extinguish Maryland's separate litigation against Hyundai Heavy Industries, the South Korean firm that built the Dali, where claims remain active [3]. Separately, families of the six workers killed in the collapse previously reached their own settlements with the ship's interests, and the federal government has pursued parallel proceedings to recover costs associated with the salvage and channel-clearance operation, which ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars [2].
With the Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine settlement now finalized, Maryland's litigation posture shifts to the Hyundai Heavy Industries proceedings, where questions of vessel design and construction defects are expected to drive discovery [3]. The state has not publicly disclosed a damages target in that case. The $2.25 billion recovery will be allocated among the Transportation Authority, Port Administration, and Department of the Environment, though the precise distribution has not been announced [1]. Brown's office characterized the figure as reflecting the full measure of infrastructure replacement costs, lost port revenues, and environmental remediation expenses the state documented following the collapse [1].