Key Bridge collapse victims, including survivor, sue Dali companies

BALTIMORE — The man who survived the March 26 Key Bridge collapse and the families of six workers who died that day simultaneously on Friday sued the companies behind the massive cargo ship that brought down the span.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for Baltimore, the civil claims target Grace Ocean Private Ltd., owner of the 984-foot Dali container ship, and Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., manager of more than 100,000-ton vessel. Those companies, both based in Singapore, moved under a 19th century federal law to limit their liability in the maritime catastrophe.

“Petitioners killed six people and severely injured two others when they recklessly crashed an unseaworthy cargo vessel into the Francis Scott Key Bridge,” wrote attorneys for Julio Cervantes Suarez, who survived the collapse. “Six days after the disaster that they caused, before all of the bodies of those who were lost were even recovered, Petitioners invoked the jurisdiction of this Court, asserting that they owe nothing for the lives they destroyed.”

The families of the six people killed in the collapse — Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, Jose Mynor Lopez, Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, Alejandro “Alex” Hernandez Fuentes, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval and Carlos Daniel Hernandez Estrella — also filed suit against the Dali’s owner and manager Friday.

Judson H. Lipowitz, an attorney for Sandoval’s mother, Rosa Emerita Sandoval Paz, said in a statement to The Baltimore Sun that the victims’ families filed the claims simultaneously to show solidarity in their grief.

“Ms. Sandoval Paz is incensed by the outrageous attempt of the Dali’s owner and manager to limit their liability for their heinous and wrongful acts that killed her son, Maynor,” Lipowitz said. “This tragedy was totally preventable. It should have never happened.”

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