You know what amazes me about this is not that the diver is suing for $4mil, but that he's suing for only $4mil. If I could put a price on my life it would be a hell of a lot higher than $4mil. Imagine floating in the ocean for 4 hours thinking that you'll never see your wife, kids, family and friends ever again, that your time was up on this earth due to some idiot that didn't do a roll call. i think he should sue for at least $10mil. This is something that you expect to read about happening in a remote tropical area or see really poorly done movies based on, not something that happens in our backyard. I hope he gets every penny and more!
Billy
You need three things for a valid lawsuit:
1) negligence
2) damages
3) some basis for attributing 2) directly to 1)
Too often, people assume two out of three is enough. In this case, there may or may not have been negligence, but what are the damages? Sunburn? A few hours of panic? It is a matter of putting a price on those things, not on his life since he didn't die. The "price" of his life simply doesn't enter into the equation. You sue for what happened, not what
could have happened.
It's a common misconception that you can sue for what MIGHT have happened. You can't. He MIGHT have died, but he didn't. Someone can install a crappy electrical system in your house that ALMOST burns your house down and kills your kids, but if it is discovered before any damage is done, you have no case other than to sue for the cost of having a new one put in.
If the negligence is egregious, however, you
can sue for punitive damages, as someone noted, even if you weren't hurt. This punishes the defendant so that he/she is dissuaded from "almost" killing the next guy (or, in fact, actually killing the next guy). As the lawyers on this board will tell you, however, getting the court to consider negligence "egregious" enough to go punitive is a tough hurdle and is rarely accomplished in cases like this.
Of course, one can always make the case that the "pain and suffering" of four hours of panic is worth something (forget the skin cancer, that's baloney), but not four million. Thus, I am not completely unsympathetic to this person, but be reasonable. A quick out-of-court payment of ten or twenty thousand dollars is probably a just outcome, but millions? That's just lawyer's hype to get national attention.
Finally, like Austin Powers, we can sue for "one mill-ee-yun dollars", but if they ain't got it, who cares? Does any dive op carry millions of dollars in insurance, or have millions in assets? I am asking, I don't know, but when I did surgery, I only had 300,000 max coverage for any one incident, so I can't imagine a dive operation carrying more than that.
As a general rule, juries rarely award more than what the insurance will cover in routine negligence cases, unless a baby is involved, some horrible death results, or some huge, deep pockets corporation is involved. Thus, if the operation is insured for x dollars for such an incident, that's likely what's the max given. So this diver isn't going to retire on this.
Also (something their lawyers rarely tell them), the plaintiff can expect to see money from this in, oh, five to ten years, unless a mediated settlement occurs quickly. As we see, years have already passed and the suit has barely gotten underway.
The real problem for defendants in such cases isn't paying the claims, it's paying the lawyers.
