Legal responsibility to your dive buddy?

[Eric Sedletzky]

As a diver going out with a buddy to do a regular dive, what is each divers responsibility to the other for safety, rescue, etc.

I ask this because in our litigation crazy society it seems that anybody can be sued for anything.

If two divers go out and something happens to one, and the buddy is either incapable of rescue or perhaps has not been trained in rescue and CPR, what recourse does the injured party have?

Besides gross negligence like for instance inadvertantly shooting a buddy with a spear gun, I don't see any recourse for something that happens to a buddy if it's not directly caused by the other diver. Isn't each diver completely responsible for themselves and their own safety if the buddy team is just diving as equals and friends?

I've had some hairy experiences with buddies in the past. With one it was a miracle nothing happened to him while we were diving. That one incident in particular caused me to swear off buddy diving and go strictly solo ever since. Now I'm relaxing a little more and trending towards wanting to share dives once again with people. I miss the commeraderie and the social aspect of buddy diving.
So I want to know the hard facts.

Maybe somebody has a story or fact they can share that can shed some light on this issue.

 

[spectrum]

In Rescue class the teaching was not to respond beyond your training. It's OK to not succeed but don't do something you are not qualified to do.

I think the fact that we're not handing each other personal liability waivers as part of the pre-dive briefing says a lot. ........ Man I wonder if those would sell on eBay?

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Bad dive buddy experiences are the reason why God gave us thumbs ... if your buddy's doing something that makes you feel for your safety or his, point yours toward the surface and begin your ascent.

Your duty of care toward your buddy is governed by the "reasonable and prudent" concept ... to follow your training and act as a reasonable and prudent person would be expected to do. Anybody can be sued for any reason ... that's the nature of our society, and the risk you take whenever you interact with anybody for just about any activity. But you have no legal responsibility to jeopardize your own safety for the sake of another. In fact, if you have taken a Rescue class you will know that part of following your training is to not do something that has a high risk of creating a second casualty.

The very best way to avoid said situations isn't to go solo ... that's a valid choice only for those who have the experience, preparation and mindset to accommodate underwater problems without assistance ... the best way to deal with dive buddies is through thorough pre-dive communication, honest assessment of your own abilities, making and sticking to a plan, and thumbing the dive early if something starts causing you stress.

In my experience, which includes well over 2,000 dives with buddies of all sorts of different backgrounds, there has been only one time when I had to call a dive because of my buddy's bad behavior ... I think the reality is far more rare than one would be led to believe by reading horror stories on ScubaBoard.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[kaerius]

My worst dive was with a drunk instructor candidate who forgot his weightbelt, didn't listen to me(including hand signals), was determined that he was leading, and was going back down to greater depth near the end of the dive(my other buddy, a DM, at this point was low on air and underweighted due to giving away weights to mr drunk). I ended up leaving the dm with my smb at 5m, and going back down to 16m to get mr. drunk to come up, and he finally listened that time... by the time we got to the safety stop, the DM had surfaced due to being too underweighted.

... oh and this was during the one day off in the middle of the IDC, and both of us passed the IE.

Comments from my course directors were: I should've just left him down there and stuck with the DM to help him out, I'm not responsible if someone willfully endangers themself.

 

[Kingpatzer]

The reality is that you can be sued by anyone for anything regardless of if you have any actual liability. And being underwater has nothing to do with it.

But when it comes to your duty of care for your dive buddy, the standard is that your duty of care is just about nothing. The expectation is that you'll be near them in case they run out of air or get in trouble, and that you'll help them within the limits of your training and experience.

 

[elmer fudd]

In Rescue class the teaching was not to respond beyond your training. It's OK to not succeed but don't do something you are not qualified to do.

My understanding of this is that you don't have to have been trained properly to use common procedures to save someone's life, but you don't do any advanced or invasive medical procedures either. So you could operate a defibrillator on someone whose heart has stopped or inject someone with a bee allergy with epinephrine without having any training, but you don't do an emergency tracheotomy or inject adrenaline into their heart, like they did in Pulp Fiction, because those are advanced medical procedures.

 

[Kingpatzer]

My understanding of this is that you don't have to have been trained properly to use common procedures to save someone's life, but you don't do any advanced or invasive medical procedures either. So you could operate a defibrillator on someone whose heart has stopped or inject someone with a bee allergy with epinephrine without having any training, but you don't do an emergency tracheotomy or inject adrenaline into their heart, like they did in Pulp Fiction, because those are advanced medical procedures.

The caveat here is (usually) that if you do not try to use the defibrillator because you have not been trained, then you have no liability. You are not required to respond to an emergency unless you are a professional specifically trained to respond (and even in those cases there are qualifications that limit liability exposure).

 

[elmer fudd]

Actually, here in Washington, I believe we are required to respond. That doesn't mean we have to give assistance, but we do have to at least report it in a timely manner.

If I remember right, this became law after a man was left to die on the side of a highway. We also have a "good Samaritan law" which gives us some legal protection from lawsuits if we do render assistance.

 

[nealdc]

I was with my buddy in the Caribbean recently and on our boat there was a female diver who was an intensive care unit nurse, who appeared to have a reasonable amount of experience, good gear, etc, who went with the group led by the DM, while I went elsewhere with my buddy on the dive. When we were returning to the line, I noticed that this person appeared disoriented and was waving her hands around in unintelligible gestures and generally seemed uneasy. I swam over to her and tried to get her attention to direct her to the line, but she did not seem to understand or to be inclined to move that way. I gently took her arm and guided her about 25-30 feet right to the mooring [about 40 feet down] and put her hand on the line and gave her the sign to do a safety stop and went back to join my buddy to finish up our air by doing a little tour around the reef near the mooring. When we surfaced, my buddy, who is an instructor was furious with me for "touching" another diver. She made it clear that in no instance short of an emergency is it proper for one diver to "touch" another such as I did in guiding this person to the line. I have actually a lot more experience than my instructor buddy, and had never heard this before, but her arguments about "out of control" divers, maybe spitting out their mouthpiece/reg, etc, and then maybe suing me seemed to catch my attention.
So, the question I have is: is it a "no-no" for one non-professional diver to "touch", guide, lead, etc., another, and am I just lucky something worse did not occur; or is it okay to do that? I was thinking about what if I encountered this person in a cross walk when the light was changing and helped her to the curb [she was not elderly or in any way feeble or frail, so that is not the issue, but I would not have hesitated on land to take a person's arm and move them along a little]. It turned out later that her first buddy had run out of air and the DM had buddied her up with another diver temporarily, but that guy left and ascended without telling her, so it made some sense as to why she seemed out of sorts, but I could not tell that, and my instructor buddy said it did not matter anyway as I had no business "touching" another diver. \
What do you think?
Thanks

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I was with my buddy in the Caribbean recently and on our boat there was a female diver who was an intensive care unit nurse, who appeared to have a reasonable amount of experience, good gear, etc, who went with the group led by the DM, while I went elsewhere with my buddy on the dive. When we were returning to the line, I noticed that this person appeared disoriented and was waving her hands around in unintelligible gestures and generally seemed uneasy. I swam over to her and tried to get her attention to direct her to the line, but she did not seem to understand or to be inclined to move that way. I gently took her arm and guided her about 25-30 feet right to the mooring [about 40 feet down] and put her hand on the line and gave her the sign to do a safety stop and went back to join my buddy to finish up our air by doing a little tour around the reef near the mooring. When we surfaced, my buddy, who is an instructor was furious with me for "touching" another diver. She made it clear that in no instance short of an emergency is it proper for one diver to "touch" another such as I did in guiding this person to the line. I have actually a lot more experience than my instructor buddy, and had never heard this before, but her arguments about "out of control" divers, maybe spitting out their mouthpiece/reg, etc, and then maybe suing me seemed to catch my attention.
So, the question I have is: is it a "no-no" for one non-professional diver to "touch", guide, lead, etc., another, and am I just lucky something worse did not occur; or is it okay to do that? I was thinking about what if I encountered this person in a cross walk when the light was changing and helped her to the curb [she was not elderly or in any way feeble or frail, so that is not the issue, but I would not have hesitated on land to take a person's arm and move them along a little]. It turned out later that her first buddy had run out of air and the DM had buddied her up with another diver temporarily, but that guy left and ascended without telling her, so it made some sense as to why she seemed out of sorts, but I could not tell that, and my instructor buddy said it did not matter anyway as I had no business "touching" another diver. \
What do you think?
Thanks

That just seems kind of strange, almost like they/she though you were trying to fondle her when in reality you were just trying to be helpful. Then on the other hand if you would have left her alone and something happenend she and everyone else would have been upset that you didn't help here. It's a no win deal. People are crazy.