The bridge is basically valueless compared to everything else about the ship and cargo plus the lawsuits from various contract breaches and other damages. Port shutdowns, environmental cleanup, insurance losses. $100m is a rounding error.
Not sure what you’re trying to say. The new bridge will cost far more than the old one, and the insurance settlement for the loss of the bridge will far exceed the original construction cost.
That isn’t how damages work either. They can’t reuse anything so it’s the price of what it costs to rebuild the same bridge in the same place with current prices and the estimated cost of cleanup and whatever business damages are claimed which almost certainly exceed the cost of the bridge.
I suppose there’s a difference between the resale (or original) value of the material, and the abstract value of having an, any, bridge in that location.
If you lose control driving and knock over an old tree and out lands on my house, you’re not only responsible for the tree - you owe me a house.
The economic damage of destroying a bridge that’ll take years to replace plus blocking a major port until debris can be cleared is going to be at least 10-figures - probably more.
It’s cost is both material and in the business of links from one side to the other. It’s almost certainly worth multi billions at this point.
Think it’s probably more appropriate to say recover instead of rescue by this point. Unfortunately the Atlantic is pretty cold this time of year.
So they’d free fall for ~3.4 seconds and hit water at around 75mph. That part could be survivable depending on angle of impact and safety features of the car. Assuming they survive impact, getting out in the dark with cold murky water coming in car and surviving the hypothermia as well and odds are slim to none.
Minor correction, that’s not the Atlantic, it’s the Patapsco river which flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
Still cold as shit and very likely those people are dead now unfortunately.
There’s an outside possibility of revival if the water is cold enough and they’re found soon.
It doesn’t matter what the bridge is worth, the owners are only liable up to the value of the ship. They’re protected by US and International law. The owners will be filing to limit their liability soon if they haven’t done so already.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/maritime-law/Limitation-of-liability
Interesting.
This formula means, generally speaking, that the shipowner is entitled to limit his liability for the negligence of the master or crew, but not for his own personal negligence or that of his managerial personnel.
Does this mean, if the captain fucks up their liability is limited, but if the accident is caused due to systematic poor maintenance maybe not?
[IANAL]To a degree yes, this is why they love to find human error, it gets them covered by their insurance and limits the liability. Systemic issues that can be proven to come from the office would open them up. This is all before we get into shell companies and vessel charters .
Does this mean, if the captain fucks up their liability is limited, but if the accident is caused due to systematic poor maintenance maybe not?
I think so, yes. It makes sense and is likely to apply here. IIRC, some article report that the ship lost power twice right before all this happened. Assuming that’s a direct cause, the whole mess may wind up with a deep investigation to understand if the crew or shipping company is at fault.
I also looked up what that means for the pilot. While the pilot works for the harbor, they are acting as a part of the crew when on ship. So outside of insubordination or gross negligence, the harbor and/or pilot take no liability here.
They were on the phone with bankruptcy lawyers before dawn. That is the ones that didn’t just disappear into hiding.
How rude, waking up lawyers that early. They’re humans too, jeez, no business calls before 9am, ok?
Can you get insurance for a ship?
I don’t know what they’re talking about but here’s an example of a maritime insurer (as well as being one of the insurers that insures other insurers)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd’s_of_London
E: sorry, Lloyd’s is not an insurer, but an “insurance and reinsurance marketplace”
Ship insurance is somewhat how modern capitalist world trade came into existence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company?wprov=sfla1
Bunch of people putting money together for ship to have a try going and returning with lots of goodies, is like an insurance I’m some way.
I think insurance isn’t just possible, it’s obligated to be allowed to enter certain ports with certain shipsizes.
Everyone learns something for the first time somewhere, but yeah. Lemmy is supposed to skew millennial.
There is a legitimate concern that their policy doesn’t cover a noticeable fraction of the damage.
