Legal
Titanic Law Helps Ship Owner Limit Bridge Collapse Liability
- An 1851 law mostly caps liability at ship’s value after crash
- Maersk seen not at risk as it had no crew aboard the Dali
The owner of the ship that rammed into a Baltimore bridge could face hundreds of millions of dollars in damage claims after the accident sent vehicles plunging into the water and threw the eastern US transportation network into chaos.
But legal experts said there is a path for reducing liability under an obscure 19th-century law once invoked by the owner of the Titanic to limit its payout for the 1912 sinking.