Liability for repairing regulators

[tbone1004]

FTFY. Would you replace the brakes on a friend's commercial truck if they just signed a great wavier? If so, by all means go work on their frigging regulator--but realize you're an idiot.

Otherwise, point them to a shop and/or do as tbone suggests and help them figure out how to fix it themselves.

note I never said how easy that waiver is to write and I know full well that they can't actually be written to the point that they will safe your butt. Insurance is the only way and that will only happen if you are factory authorized for that regulator. To that point, good luck getting parts for most regulators if you aren't factory authorized tech because the big boys don't like letting them out. There are videos and service manuals available for most of them online, and most of them actually follow one of 3 different internal designs. I.e. if you can repair a scubapro mk25 properly, you can handle most balanced pistons, if you can service any Apeks reg or its variants/clones, you can service most balanced diaphragms properly, etc etc. Some second stages are weird, mainly the servo regs, but the manuals are out for them too. nbd

 

[Lorenzoid]

note I never said how easy that waiver is to write and I know full well that they can't actually be written to the point that they will safe your butt. . . .

You miss the point. A waiver could be ironclad on its face--a perfect piece of work--and yet a court might decide it's against public policy to enforce it. It's a contract between two parties. In the case of use of a liability waiver by dive operators, ski resorts, race organizers, etc., it's well established in every state that a waiver is enforceable to one extent or another. But it may or may not be so in a situation where you repair your friend's regulator (or the brakes on his car for that matter). There may or may not be a legal precedent for it. I have no idea.

 

[Dr. Lecter]

You miss the point. A waiver could be ironclad on its face--a perfect piece of work--and yet a court might decide it's against public policy to enforce it. It's a contract between two parties. In the case of use of a liability waiver by dive operators, ski resorts, race organizers, etc., it's well established in every state that a waiver is enforceable to one extent or another. But it may or may not be so in a situation where you repair your friend's regulator (or the brakes on his car for that matter). There may or may not be a legal precedent for it. I have no idea.

There's also the issue of what an agreement between two parties can waive. You may not be able to waive a spouse's claim for loss of consortium; you cannot waive a buddy's claim that the reason he was injured was you died because of an improperly serviced regulator and in so dying caused an entanglement/silt-out/whatever.

 

[Tbar]

Just to add a different slant...

What if the equipment is mine and I service it, then a family member borrows it - does that change liability?

Or it is mine and it is not serviced 'regularly' by an authorized agent, then a family member borrows it - does that change liability?

Then what constituents servicing, if I change the BC inflator hose, connect a new SPG or computer, change the battery in the computer, take the purge cover off to clean some sand out, adjust the orifice to stop a leak when at the dive site. Can I inspect but not be seen as servicing.

If I service my gear and someone needs the alternate air and they have a problem?

This could be a can of worms...

 

[eelnoraa]

Unfortunity, Americans like to sue. Too often, people sue others for their own ignorance and stupidity and get rewarded.

 

[Tbar]

Unfortunity, Americans like to sue. Too often, people sue others for their own ignorance and stupidity and get rewarded.

Much the same in Australia, winners are lawyers and insurers...

 

[NotSure]

Starting to get into repairing my regulators and am having a lot of friends and acquaintances ask if I will do theirs. How do you deal with liability? I am not affiliated with a shop.

thanx

Don't let your friends commit suicide by regulator neglect when you could prevent it. I dive with a cheapskate that would never service his regs if not shamed into it. I showed him how and never touched his regs, but you can bet your life I will get sued if any thing happens. The only way to not get sued is to have less in assets than a lawyer charges in fees.

 

[bada3003]

Maybe the notion of 'friend' has gotten diluted with all the social media stuff but why not service a reg as a favor to a friend? Same goes for break repair, electrical wiring, etc., assuming you are sufficiently competent. For pay, or if it's just an acquaintance, sure, you don't know what you're getting into. And if it's a newbie diver who doesn't know what to do if a reg free flows, sure, they may benefit from hand holding provided by a dive shop until they become more competent. Otherwise, just do it. The accident stats indicate that regulator failures are not a significant cause of dive fatalities. For a reasonably competent recreational diver, what's the worst that can happen to a reg that cannot be addressed by appropriate diver reaction? It seems to me that the overall likelihood that a friend encounters a dire situation from regulator failure and decides to sue is less than getting hit by lightening. In a sport where calculated risk management is an essential component, worrying about a friend suing seems irrational at best. Unless one is surrounded by 'friends' who are opportunistic a&*holes and just waiting to take you to the cleaners. Let's not call them friends then.

 

[boulderjohn]

Waivers are useless and won't stop the family from suing you for every penny you have and will ever earn in the future.

note I never said how easy that waiver is to write and I know full well that they can't actually be written to the point that they will safe your butt.

As someone who is required to use waivers for instruction, I have a non-attorney understanding and explanation that may help. Waivers are designed for the most part to stop nuisance suits. Waivers go a long way toward preventing the lawsuits that would normally include you just because you were in some way involved with the problem. They do not in any way protect you if you are truly negligent. The instructor waivers I use have been thoroughly thought out and crafted over decades of fine tuning, but I know darn well that if I break standards in my role as an instructor, that waiver will not help me. If I do everything by the book and a student has some problem anyway, that waiver will help, but if I do something stupid, it won't do a thing for me. For example, a couple of years ago a student in a scuba class in the University of Alabama had an embolism practicing doff and don exercises while the instructor was at the other end of the pool talking with another student. That student must have signed a waiver, but that waiver assumes that the student will be under constant supervision from the instructor.

Probably the most bullet proof waivers in any business are found in the ski industry. Ski area waivers pretty much say that anything that happens to you while skiing is your fault. Living as I do in the heart of ski country, I assure you that this does not prevent successful lawsuits when the ski area does something wrong that results in an accident. It doesn't happen often, but it happens.

I therefore assume that if a problem with a regulator hurts someone and it turns out to be my fault for poor servicing, nothing in a waiver will help me.

 

[Lorenzoid]

As someone who is required to use waivers for instruction, I have a non-attorney understanding and explanation that may help. Waivers are designed for the most part to stop nuisance suits. Waivers go a long way toward preventing the lawsuits that would normally include you just because you were in some way involved with the problem. They do not in any way protect you if you are truly negligent. The instructor waivers I use have been thoroughly thought out and crafted over decades of fine tuning, but I know darn well that if I break standards in my role as an instructor, that waiver will not help me. If I do everything by the book and a student has some problem anyway, that waiver will help, but if I do something stupid, it won't do a thing for me. For example, a couple of years ago a student in a scuba class in the University of Alabama had an embolism practicing doff and don exercises while the instructor was at the other end of the pool talking with another student. That student must have signed a waiver, but that waiver assumes that the student will be under constant supervision from the instructor.

Probably the most bullet proof waivers in any business are found in the ski industry. Ski area waivers pretty much say that anything that happens to you while skiing is your fault. Living as I do in the heart of ski country, I assure you that this does not prevent successful lawsuits when the ski area does something wrong that results in an accident. It doesn't happen often, but it happens.

I therefore assume that if a problem with a regulator hurts someone and it turns out to be my fault for poor servicing, nothing in a waiver will help me.

And there lies part of the uncertainty. In some situations, like maybe giving instruction where the instructor is held to certain standards, a waiver might not protect the instructor if the instructor is negligent. But in other situations, a waiver can indeed protect one if they are negligent. There's usually a distinction between simple negligence and gross negligence or recklessness; it's almost always true that waivers won't protect one from their gross negligence or recklessness.

A waiver may not stop a nuisance lawsuit. The injured person who signed your waiver is still free to sue you if he wants to, and then you have to hire a lawyer to file a summary judgment motion that asks the court to dismiss the lawsuit because of the waiver. That's a nuisance.

I've had to draft a few waivers for athletic events, and I looked to ski resort waivers as a model. The ones I have seen do have the skier waive his right to sue the resort for injury resulting from the resort's (simple) negligence.

Since it's not clear what courts would make of some diver getting his friend to sign a waiver before he fixes his friend's regulator, I would not rely on it. And DrLecter makes some good points about the shortcomings of waivers.