Key Bridge civil trial will proceed June 1 despite criminal charges, judge rules

A federal judge said he would not delay the civil case against the companies that own and operate the container ship that toppled the Francis Scott Key Bridge, finding Wednesday that new criminal charges don’t justify halting a long-awaited June 1 trial.

Senior U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar ruled against the companies, Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and Synergy Marine Group, and rejected a federal prosecutor’s request to let the criminal case proceed first.

“The right course, the best course, the most fair course, is to stay the course,” Bredar said at a pretrial hearing Wednesday.

The companies argued that moving ahead with the civil trial would harm their ability to defend themselves. All of their employees who might testify at the civil trial have said they will not travel to the United States because they fear being detained.

“We have no witnesses who are willing to come to the United States,” said William R. Bennett, an attorney for the companies. That might change if the criminal case is allowed to come to a conclusion first, Bennett said.

Grace Ocean Private Ltd. owns the container ship Dali, which crashed into the Key Bridge in the early-morning hours of March 26, 2024, and Synergy Marine Group is the vessel’s operator.

Synergy and one of its employees — Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair, a technical superintendent — both face criminal charges in the disaster. Grace Ocean has not been criminally charged.

Federal prosecutors allege that the Key Bridge crash could have been prevented had Synergy properly maintained the Dali’s generators. The company used a flushing pump that was not intended for that job, according to the indictment. The modification proved dangerous when the ship had a power failure as it left Baltimore.

Nair, who is believed to be in India, is accused of removing references to the flushing pump from ship records and lying about his knowledge of the modification to investigators.

In court on Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Phelps said the criminal case should move forward before the civil trial. The federal government can compel witnesses to testify and use other tools that are not available in the civil case, he said.

Phelps acknowledged that waiting for the criminal case to wrap up could mean that the civil case is on hold for at least a year, if not longer.

“This is one of the most, if not the most complicated case I’ve ever worked on in terms of size and scope,” Phelps said.

Bredar ultimately found that the potential harms to Synergy did not outweigh the harms of postponing the civil trial.

The trial will determine whether the Singaporean companies can cap their liability in the Key Bridge crash at around $44 million, a fraction of the cost of rebuilding.

Ahead of the trial, the companies reached a $2.25 billion settlement with the state of Maryland and inked a separate, undisclosed agreement with the state’s insurance company. Grace Ocean and Synergy also settled with the U.S. Department of Justice for just over $100 million.

Even after those major settlements, the civil case is far from over. The city of Baltimore and Baltimore County, the families of five construction workers who died in the bridge collapse, and businesses that lost money following the crash are still poised to go to trial over the companies’ liability.

One wrongful death claim from the family of a sixth construction worker has been resolved with a settlement, a lawyer for Synergy said Wednesday.

The civil trial will be complicated. Every member of the ship’s crew invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during depositions in the civil case. As a corporate defendant, Synergy cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Synergy has said that its employees are hesitant to testify even over video, though they are still discussing the possibility with their attorneys.

The employees fear that they will be detained and held in the Baltimore area indefinitely, like several members of the Dali’s crew who have been stuck here for the past two years under an agreement between Synergy and the federal government.

As a result, the civil trial will largely rely on expert witnesses and transcripts of depositions that were taken earlier in the case.