IMHO;
The legal liability in this matter will probably fall to the DM/DG and the Operator. My opinion is based on all the valid points raised here in this forum as well as the fact that the legal (liability) focus will come from the loved ones of the deceased and other people on the boat who have been exposed to emotional trauma and suffering. PADI, you can be sure, will have their asses covered all the way with the paperwork, so you could not take them on without heavy-duty legal support and $$$. I suspect the thrust of the legal strategy will be focused on the apparent miss-representation of the DG/DM by the operator and the ethical duty of care. Words like "This could have been prevented if the .......
DG was a DM and stated that,
DM acted like a DM,
DM had not exceeded the recommendations for the minimum qualifications in his group,
Operator had not allowed multi qualified divers on a boat with a single DM,
Tour operator had evaluated the operator before recommending the victim
and so forth...."
When you step through the thread, you see bit's and pieces of this unfolding through various "players" already showing their hand somwhat. xxxx, the aggrieved / xxxx, the lawyer / xxxx the PADI representative / xxxx from the dive operator / xxxx, the local expert on conditions etc...
In this sense, this thread should be neither in the accident/incident section nor in the Cheeze and Whine section, it should be in a "legal discussion section".
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As far as the accident itself, there are very few facts out there that give us any indication of what actually went wrong with the diver and what (non-admin) events caused this tragedy.
We are all confident that if a novice diver had reached 346' (105m) and then arrived at the surface within 2 minutes of the start of his ascent, that the ascent rate and lack of deco would probably have killed him. Given that this was not planned, there appears to be no disputing that matter. The well delivered commentary by a local diver does provide a possible theory of an incapacitated diver breathing the tank empty and thus providing enough + buoyancy to initiate an ascent. It seems fair to say that once events had reached that point, there was not much that could have been done to prevent his death.
The questions for me are more related to the what happened between 60'(18m) and 130'(40m), how did he become separated from the group? Was he over-weighted? Was there any equipment malfunction (BCD failure)? Did he simply become awestruck by the scenery? loose spacial orientation and realise this at 346'(105m).
There are other procedural questions that arise in an attempt to establish if the training mechanisms that made up the diver's skill set, confidence, knowledge, experience and so on provided a suitable platform to equip this person with the means to manage himself in these situations as they presented themselves.
In this sense, the thread absolutely belongs in the accident/incident section, nothing less. In my opinion however, without active deletion of messages, it would be difficult to keep the discussion focused on the accident side without the legal/liability/blame posters making their points loudly and continuously.
Best Regards
Richard
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