well this is what his attorney said in 2005 :
"Carlock's attorney, Scott P. Koepke, said his client hoped the suit would ensure that no other Southern California divers go through what he suffered.
"He thought about it a lot and realized he could not live with himself if two or three years from now somebody floats up dead from the same situation, and he did nothing about it," Koepke said.
I guess that now he will donate all the law suit money to skin cancer research and improvement of diver safety
Well it will probably be years before he sees a penny. I wouldn't be surprised if there's an appeal. And even if there's not, and he gets the payout, remember that a large chunk of this will not end up in his pocket. The case took 5 years to complete - that's a lot of legal fees.
I have tried to think about what I would do if I was in his fins. I've never sued anyone in my life, and I believe that we live in an overly-litigious society. But if that happened to me, I would feel the same way he did. I would want to do whatever I could to ensure that nobody ever has to go through the same horror. There
was gross negligence here. And clearly the jury agreed.
Do you really think he should have just let it go? Is there anyone in here who really feels that, if they were wronged in this way, they would just walk away? If so, my hat's off to you - you must be an incredibly forgiving person.
Perhaps the amount is high - but that's what the jury awarded. It wasn't up to Dan - it was up to the jury. Don't blame Dan for that. All he did was put on his case. The jury decided how much to give him.
My opinion briefly:
It should have been settled out of court.
The DM taking roll call was incompetent and lied in court.
The other DM's/buddies should have surfaced when they lost their buddy.
Carlock should not have been diving without a refresher course(108' w/out diving in over a year?)
The Sundiver operation has a great reputation.
It should not have taken this case to change the way roll call is taken and if any other operations do not take heed, more lawsuits are to follow.
The DM who took roll call should lose his/her ticket. That is a heavy responsibility and should be taken very seriously.
Agree with everything you said. Your post pretty much sums up my opinion on this topic.
I feel for this gentleman, I can't imagine the terror he must have felt, but that award is way over the top. Ray is one of the best Captains I've ever come in contact with. This was not his crew, as others have said, he didn't even have a crew then, he was only the transport vehicle. I think the fault lies with shop and the DM, and also a little with Mr. Carlock for putting himself in a situation he was ill prepared to deal with. Oil Rigs should never be considered as an option for a refresher dive! I've dived with Ray before and many times after this incident, I hope this doesn't effect my ability to dive with them in the future.
I'm torn over whether the award is too high...but in any event, the jury decided. I agree with everything else you said here.
Sorry, this just isn't a logical conclusion in this situation. The DM/captain/shop is not being punished for not finding him fast enough. They are being punished for not doing one thing that is clearly their responsibility - keeping track of people as they leave and reboard the boat.
Suppose that Dan was suicidal, and after jumping in the water swam as fast as he could downcurrent, hoping to be lost at sea. And then the DM marked him in at the end of the dive, and then marked him in and out at the second dive site. The DM/captain/shop's actions in that hypothetical case would be exactly as negligent, because the duty that they are neglecting has absolutely nothing to do with Dan's actions. And that seems to be what this case is about, IMHO.
If they had noted him absent, and begun the search as outlined above, then the DM/captain/shop would be 100% in the clear, whether they found him or not. And in that case, it would be entirely about Dan's responsibility as a certified diver. But that isn't what happened. Hence this discussion..!
This also sums up exactly why I feel the way I do about this case. Regardless of whatever mistakes Dan made on his dive, the boat left him there, and he was marked in to roll calls - twice. His mistakes simply do not excuse that. IMHO.
There is no doubt that the DM screwed up and the Captain of the boat is the final authority - the buck stops with him. No doubt at all. Inexcusable.
Okay, so if you feel this way, why continue to trash the diver for his errors? What the boat did was inexcusable. I keep seeing that line, even from people who trash Dan. But it keeps being followed with a "but...", followed by a litany of his errors. Nothing that Dan did caused the boat to do what it did.
They were diving at the rigs on a day with fog and a strong current. That's a pretty dicey situation, and probably one in which the entire dive should have been called. But they went forward with it...so they should have been prepared for the possibility of someone surfacing away from the rig, at any point in time. Even the most advanced divers sometimes have things go wrong. Someone should have been scanning that water. And no matter what, they should have done a proper roll call.
Look, I'm a firm believer in diver responsibility. I'm often the first person in the A&I forum to say to a diver posting about his near-miss, "stop blaming the boat/DM/your buddy/your travel agent. YOU are responsible for your own dive." When divers complain that a DM on a typical tropical DM-led dive made them do something they were uncomfortable with, I ask them, "So why'd you do it? Thumb the dive!" I'm sure my viewpoint stems from being a SoCal diver, where we don't get led by the nose by DMs on our dives - we're expected to be self-sufficient, competent, and able to execute our own dives without DM babysitters, unlike so many other dive destinations around the world.
But with that expectation, WE have to be able to count on our boats to do THEIR jobs. And that includes executing a proper roll call. Fortunately, this case has ensured that this will likely never happen again, at least in SoCal. And nobody had to die.
There were a lot of bad things happening that day and most of them were due to his lack of skill and experience
.
Most of them? What part of the DM marking him in twice, and the boat leaving him, then telling the Coast Guard he was left at the second site, was his fault? Those, IMO, are the key things that this case was about.
As for this particular case, there is no question that the chartering organization bears responsibility, and based on ultimate responsibility for the dives the boat crew as well. Marking a diver as returned and then checked out again while he is drifting at the first dive site is indeed negligent.
However, based on what I remember from reading about this incident, the diver did not follow normally accepted safe diving procedures and should bear some of the responsibility. I guess that is why the judge decreased the settlement.
To state that he developed skin cancer from a single exposure does seem specious to me though.
Another post I agree with. Re the skin cancer claim, we talked about that earlier in the thread - many believe it was included by his lawyer due to a now-defunct part of CA law that required that there be a physical injury in addition to an emotional-distress claim. Even though this is no longer law, many lawyers still do it. It's been theorized that that is the reason it was included in the case, as an artifact of old law.
