I guess this was inevitable.

[mccabejc]

IMHO, you sue someone to recover damages. They slam into your car, you sue them (if necessary) to recover the cost of repairs and any medical costs. In my view, that's what's right and just.

What was the damage here? The skin cancer claim is nonsense. Maybe he had some medical costs. Did the company cause him to have those medical costs outside of his control? If it happened to me, I'd blame myself, not the boat.

But what he's talking about, and I think is ridiculous, is penalizing the company some ridiculous amount of money that has nothing to do with recovering damages. It's not even penalizing. It's trying to grab as much money as he can.

The jury should determine the actual damages done, and the percentage that the company was at fault (probably not much compared to his own responsibility), and have them pay that percentage of the damages. No more, no less.

Unfortunately he'll probably win the boatload of money.

 

[mweitz]

mccabejc,

I don't agree totally. One of the reasons you sue is to penalize the company / person in question. If you punch me, and it costs you 4 Mil, I bet you won't punch someone else in the near future . Now, once you have set the precedent, others will likely be more careful. Though there is certainly a lot of BS stuff going on in lawsuits, a lot of good does come out of it in the end. I just think that the path to good is sometimes painful.
Mark

 

[Turtle Diver]

This thread is a discussion of the incident at the time.


http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=54468&page=1&pp=10


There is plenty of blame to go around here.

Dan screwed up in not surfacing soon after losing his buddy, and he screwed up in not attempting to swim for the boat after he did surface.

His buddy (or buddies; it's still not clear to me if he had 1 or 2 buddies) screwed up in not reporting him getting separated.

The DM screwed up in somehow logging him on the boat after the first dive.

The Captain screwed up because he trusted the DM to do the roll call, and it happened on his boat. That's why the Coast Guard suspended his license.

I've been on the Sundiver, on an open boat trip as opposed to a dive shop charter. So the Captain did the roll call himself, and nobody was left behind. I would go on his boat again, if I were diving from LA, which I don't do very often.

I don't believe the Cpt "lied" about his whereabouts. Unknowingly giving incorrect information is not lying. And I don't believe the skin cancer in one foggy day story, either.

 

[ChrisM]

mccabejc,

I don't agree totally. One of the reasons you sue is to penalize the company / person in question. If you punch me, and it costs you 4 Mil, I bet you won't punch someone else in the near future . Now, once you have set the precedent, others will likely be more careful. Though there is certainly a lot of BS stuff going on in lawsuits, a lot of good does come out of it in the end. I just think that the path to good is sometimes painful.
Mark

Actually, not quite right. There is a big difference between negligent acts and intentional acts, only the latter of which provides for punishment.

The "normal" measure of damages is that which makes you whole. So, for negligence (i.e., just screwing up), you get damages that you actually suffered. In your example, if the punch led to $4 million in foreseeable damages, that's what you are entitled to. under this scenario, dan is not entitled to much... unless of course you allege cancer... future treatments, lost wages, etc etc.....

bringing us to intentional torts.

To get "punitive" damages -- those designed to punish -- you must show intentional conduct. That is why he claims the captain lied - so that he can try to recover for fraud. That is also why he sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress. But in eitehr case he has to show that the defendants INTENDED him harm, rather than merely screwing up.

Don't let the allegations fool you. Lawyers dig like crazy and come up wth ludicrous allegations in order to claim intentional conduct. Punitive damages are a sword hanging over a defendant's head... and get this ... insurance companies are prohibited by law from covering for punitive damages. So any punitive damage award is paid by the defendant solely. It could ruin you.

SO think about this one. Under these circumstances, is it fair that Steve Ladd and Capt Ray potentially lose their life savings and their businesses because the DM screwed up.... and Mr. Carlock suffered very little, if any injury... and he ends up a millionaire because of it?

Pure and simple greed.

 

[sfsusa]

Hi, everybody !

There is the original story about the accident occurred back to April, 2004 ( Pushed by currents, hidden by fog, a diver realizes: 'They left me' ).

The Sundiver boat runs by one of the most experienced Captain in S. California. That day the boat was chartered by Ocean Adventures Dive Co. (I think they are in Venice, CA, but I might be wrong) and the Ocean's divemaster took charge of roll calls.

Dive safe...

 

[Ann Marie]

Isn't that Florida?

J/K
:fro:

Oh shoot, you're right we're the GOLDEN state....golden/sunshine...same difference......I was on a rant! :11:

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Yeah, this attitude has suprised me, too. I would think if there's one thing we can agree on, it's that it would suck to be left floating in 55 degree water for 5 hours. Is it because he's suing for so much? The silly skin cancer part seems to have tweaked people, too.

I have never even thought about suing someone, but if you can't bother to do a head count and leave me floating in the middle of the ocean, I'll probably sue you too.

Gregg

Everyone agrees that the DM should carry most of the blame here, but the fact is that if a perfect roll call was taken, Dan would still have been lost. He was not a very experienced diver, hadn't dived recently and was attempting a potentially extreme dive ten miles from shore. When he had trouble equalizing and got seperated from his buddies, he should have surfaced. Instead, he stayed under for several minutes. Reports vary between ten to twenty minutes. He didn't keep the legs of the oil rigs in sight. That is a huge mistake in open-ocean diving. When he finally surfaced, he could still see the boat and rigs. Rather than swim to the boat, he decided that he would just wait for the boat to come and get him. If he was only in the water for 10-20 minutes, it would be up to an hour or more before a roll call. By then, he would be lost in the heavy fog. After being rescued by the passing Boy Scout ship he made the media rounds blaming everyone else for being left behind. Not once did he admit that he caused the disappearance. Now he is attempting to become a millionaire at the expense of the captain who has already served the suspension of his license, the shop and their Divemaster. Yes, the buddy system failed, the DM screwed the pooch twice with his roll calls and the captain trusted the DM's word. However, none of this would have happened if Dan had simply swam to the boat when he surfaced, or better yet, stuck to shallow reef diving.

 

[Ann Marie]

I'm with ChrisM on this one.

I think that several individuals are to blame. It sounds like a lot of little mistakes led to a diver being left behind. It wasn't intentional and luckily no one died. Instead of suing everyone involved (in my mind that says you are responsible and I wasn't), why not work to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone again. How about working within the industry to set some strick 'rules' so that nothing like this could happen again.

Yep, suing send a big 4 million message but in the end it can costs everyone....higher insurance rates, higher boat trip costs, loss of life savings, loss of time and money for court and legal fees. Who really wins except Dan?

As customers on dive boats, we can request a better roll call from DMs. I do a lot of boat diving and I make it a point to introduce myself to the DM and to talk to him/her. I want them to recognize me. I haven't been on a boat dive in a long time where they haven't done a face to face roll call. See the person, hear them say 'hey', check them in. I usually stick to a few boat and dive with people that I respect and that I hope would say something if I wasn't there . On the other hand my buddy knows that I will stick to them like glue and if I'm not there, something is wrong.

 

[Rouky]

This case just reminds me of dives I did in Australia on the barrier reef where you stay on a boat for 3-4 days in the middle of nowhere.

It happened that divers disappeared (read a few articles about that), especially during the night and with a strong current (drift diving when you know what you're doing is awesome).

However, the procedure in place was that the DM had everybody to sign the roll call sheet.
If someone did not sign, the boat wouldn't certainly move....

And that went even a bit further. We had to write the max depth and bottom time, how much air remained in our tank etc. - almost the complete log book....
Then after the surface interval we would have to calculate our maximum depth and bottom to ensure that we were no doing deco dives (having a computer would exempt you from doing the successive dives calculation based on PADI tables).

Those strict procedures - as I was explained - were imposed after several lost divers resulting in fatalities. But somehow it makes sense if you want to protect the diving industry and set very high standards.
Also, a thing not to forget is the fact that research efforts by coast guard, navy etc... are extremely expensive.

Just some thoughts....

 

[Turtle Diver]

T
We had to write the max depth and bottom time, how much air remained in our tank etc. - almost the complete log book....

...

How does writing your maximum depth (instead of just your name) insure you're back on the boat?