Search for "Drifting Dan."
Short story: Some guy got left in the ocean for four hours after a dive. He was a sucky diver and the boat people blamed the victim. In the end, the Jury awarded him 1.68 Million American doll hairs. They were going to give him 2.1M but knocked a bit off the top due to how much Dan sucked. Most likely, his lawyer took 1.6 and left $80k for Dan.
It was an oil rig dive, off Huntington Beach, for which dive boats are supposed to be a bit more selective in the divers they take, not appropriate for inexperienced divers. The rigs are essentially open ocean and there is almost always current... sometimes mild, sometimes stronger (although the structure of the rig provides some protection.)
Dan was found to be partially responsible because he didn't follow the crew's directions (i.e. stay within the confines of the rig structure, before, during and after the dive) and he made no attempt to alert the boat to his presence when he surfaced outside the rig structure (in a relatively strong current.) In testimony, he claimed that his OW training had taught him to just "wait for the boat to come pick him up" if he was caught in a current. So that is what he did.
The crew was found negligent because after the dive they didn't know he was missing. When Dan's name was called at the roll call, someone responded and that was that. If I recall correctly, there was more than one Dan on the roster that day, which contributed to the confusion.
By pure chance, Drifting Dan crossed paths with another boat hours later and they plucked him out of the water.
An interesting sidenote: PADI was named as a defendant in the lawsuit because the DM on the boat was PADI. In their defense, PADI tried to explain that they had no direct control over the DM, but the jury didn't buy it. PADI got nailed for part of that $1.7 million settlement. And soon after they added a section to the PADI course waiver for students to acknowledge that instructors and DMs are not employees or agents or a couple other things of PADI.
As for the lawyer getting $1.6 million and Dan getting $80k... sounds about right.
