Maltese court convicts dive buddy

[ROUS]

It’s worth reading the Maltese diving regulations.

Wow. Onerous rules.

 

[SlugLife]

re:

Summary of the Judgement - Christine Gauci's fatal accident and initial outcome of the prosecution of her buddy. - divinginfo.mt

Divinginfo.mt would first of all like to express again condolences to the Family of Ms Christine Gauci who died following a dive in Mgarr ix-Xini, Gozo in January 2020. Unfortunately her relatives and friends may have been brought back the ugly memory of the incident and her unfortunate demise...

www.divinginfo.mt

The twin set being completely empty is another question. An experienced fit diver can handle any of the afore-mentioned problems and would know better than to breath the main cylinders completely empty before switching to the 7 lt with the Nitrox mix. If she had ran completely out of air at the end of the dive at 10mts depth, she had a number of relatively safe options to resort to in order to make it safely to the surface ....<snip>... The deceased took none of these actions but made an uncontrolled ascent to the surface.

She failed to do A,B,C,D....X,Y,Z. He failed to do a very, very, very tiny fraction of that. She was a scuba-instructor, so you'd presume it's safe to assume she was competent to do basic things like switch gas. I'm not judging her, just saying how weird it is to assign blame to him.

The equipment expert also confirmed that the buddy at the point of the ascent of Christine had also a decompression requirement and if he had gone up immediately, there would have been two accidents.

I don't know the Malta legal system. However, it seems logically speaking that for someone to be guilty of a crime, there would have to be an appropriate, logical action to take. The one thing I haven't read, is a statement of what the appropriate action for Castillo would have been. Killing himself in an attempt to rescue her? He didn't know for a fact that she needed rescue. He did abbreviate his decompression. Setting aside self-harm risks, he probably couldn't have rescued her anyway, even if he rocketed to the surface.

Even if "But local laws say...", any "law" which expects people to kill themselves to adhere to a piece of paper, is not law, it's a mandate and absurdity.

He also remarked critically on the use of the drysuit due to its large size, which required more air and was found to be defective.

I have seen no article yet state where she got the drysuit from, so presumably, it's her dry-suit. Presumably anything fault with the drysuit, or her inability to use it is on her. She is afterall a scuba-instructor, and therefore informed of the risks of ... for example ... faulty equipment, or using equipment without trianing. Everything about the drysuit suggests Castillo is not at fault in any way.

Compressed air for diving purposes must never be supplied by an unlicensed operator with questionable maintenance on compressor.

Completely, 100% irrelevant, unless you discover contaminants in the gas. That's like saying "solo-diver who was eaten by a shark died because he violated the never dive without a buddy rule."

…although the diving computer’s setting is not overtly dangerous in itself, its setting at its most aggressive setting speaks to the diver’s general demeanour towards risk taking.

100% False. People adjust those settings based on what their body can tolerate and past experience. Also nothing to do with the incident.

An experienced, level-headed and properly trained instructor would have ended the dive at this point, seeing the blatant issues with buoyancy control and overuse of gas supply.

She was a dive-instructor. Why didn't she end the dive? Why is it his responsibility?

The whole scope of the diving buddy system is for the two divers to be close to each other to assist each other in any untoward event during the dive. The assumption that Ms. Gauci was safe on the surface and swimming back to shore, when no such contact and reasoning was made between the two divers, proved to be highly significant as it ensured the omission of a rescue attempt.

Slippery logic and not entirely accurate. Clearly this "expert" was paid well by the prosecutor.

There are many cases in which buddies lose contact for many different reasons. There is also a standard protocol for lost-buddy procedures, That is look around for your buddy for a minute and then surface according to what is safe, following any deco-procedures.

In order to suggest a rescue attempt should have been made, Castillo would have had to known a rescue attempt was needed.

Although actus reus or mens rea cannot be implied, negligence and omission are still evident from [Diving Buddy]’s side.

What I see described doesn't fit common legal definitions of negligence. Instead, it's more "negligence" like not being 100% hyper-vigilant 100% of the time. The idea that people can see micro-flaws in your actions, when they have 100x the time to examine your actions than you did at the time.

Whatever supposed negligent actions by Castillo are absolutely common among buddy-pairs. People don't check eachother's air. People don't call the dive because their buddy seems to be having difficulty, but says they're ok. Buddy-divers lose sight of eachother often. Everything described was literally your average buddy-dive.

This obligation to use reasonable care is very commonly expressed by reference to the conduct of a ‘reasonable man’ or of an ‘ordinarily prudent man’

Sure, that's the legal definition of negligence, but what specifically was outside the scope of what an ordinary diver does?

he did not do it at the end of the dive and did not establish eye contact and had only seen her clutching the nitrox bottle.

Ok? Clearly this magistrate has never scuba-dived a day in his life. Just put on a scuba-mask and walk around for 10 minutes.

The Magistrate further stated that he did not check with her again whether she had air even though according to the Magistrate there was an indication she was breathing heavily.

So? It's her responsibility to monitor her air. Yes, it's good to ask your buddy about air-levels, but unless I'm diving with a brand new open-water diver, I'm assuming they're monitoring their air. She was a scuba-instructor afterall. Furthermore, she had a full tank of deco-gas. She wasn't out of air, she failed to switch.

He cites having a deco obligation and being light, hence the reason for not following her. This is disproven by his decompression computer – a 2 minute deco obligation at 5 minutes is never an impediment to seek a lost diving buddy.

The wording is a bit weird here, but if I'm reading this correctly, this is false. You never endanger yourself to chase after someone who might need a rescue. First, they criticize his "aggressive" dive-computer settings, but then criticize him for not being aggressive?!

the accused had made certain assumptions and had not looked after Christine after the separation even though he had had rescue diver training.

Cite where in a standard rescue course, his actions deviated from training?

The court stated that it was convinced that the lack of action by him when assuming that she was safe resulted in her death, which according to the court, could have been prevented had he taken action.

Again, he's clearly not a diver. Someone climbing out of the water a few hundred yards away which looks like your dive-buddy? Whew, they're safe! Sounds normal to me. It's hard to really see stuff around you with your eyes a few inches above the surface.

as well as 2/3 of the expert witness expenses incurred by the court.

Those expert witnesses are scumbags, liars, and pr*stit*tes willing to imprison a man for money. Yes, I said it. IMO, the local dive community should find the names of those "experts" and ostracize them. They are dishonest and do diving a disservice.

 

[L13]

Those expert witnesses are scumbags, liars, and pr*stit*tes willing to imprison a man for money. Yes, I said it. IMO, the local dive community should find the names of those "experts" and ostracize them. They are dishonest and do diving a disservice.

I think this needs to be highlighted. The ignorance of the rest of the judicial system is the fault of the "Expert Witnesses."

 

[BlueTrin]

This is a bit shocking tbh, I guess it could give a reason to not insta buddy in Malta …

 

[boulderjohn]

I think this needs to be highlighted. The ignorance of the rest of the judicial system is the fault of the "Expert Witnesses."

Years ago I talked for quite a few hours in a rambling conversation with a very well known and highly paid expert witness for scuba trials. I was specifically asking about an expert witness statement he had filed on behalf of the plaintiff in a particular case, and I asked him about a couple descriptive statements he had made about the dive site that were incorrect. He shrugged that off, saying he had never seen the site himself. Everything in his statement had been given to him by the plaintiff's attorney, so any inaccuracies were the attorney's fault.

He explained that as an expert witness, his job is to render an opinion favorable to the side that hired him. That's why they hire him, and that's why he gets paid the big bucks.

He told me about another case in which he was hired as an expert witness, a case in which the side he was working for lost because they did not put him on the stand. He said his opinion would have sewed the case up for them (and it was a big one), but he refused to go on the stand because they had been slow in paying him. Their loss.

I later learned the truth from the expert witness from the other side in that case. The truth is that their team had learned just before his scheduled testimony that if he had testified, they would have been screwed. The opposing team had searched his record as an expert witness and found that in an almost identical case some years before, he had worked for the other side and made the precise opposite argument he was about to make in this case.

 

[Beau Holden]

He explained that as an expert witness, his job is to render an opinion favorable to the side that hired him. That's why they hire him, and that's why he gets paid the big bucks.

Our legal system at it's finest.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

There are many cases in which buddies lose contact for many different reasons. There is also a standard protocol for lost-buddy procedures, That is look around for your buddy for a minute and then surface according to what is safe, following any deco-procedures.

And within that timeframe that buddy could die. That is a risk in scuba that can never be eliminated. We all have to accept that.

 

[SlugLife]

And within that timeframe that buddy could die. That is a risk in scuba that can never be eliminated. We all have to accept that.

Precisely, which is why every diver's #1 obligation and responsibility is always to their own safety. Because to endanger your own safety would be to endanger the safety of another. "But Castillo neglected 2-3 minor things" So what if he did? What about the laundry-list of neglect on Gauci's side? She was endangering Castillo in a much, much, much bigger way. If Castillo had an issue, Gauci would have been far less able to assist.

I have to return to the fact that she had a full deco-tank, that she didn't use! He's somehow supposed to rescue her, when she didn't manage to switch to the deco-tank or request air as her main slooooowly ran out of air?

 

[dlofting]

I'm really surprised that the defence didn't bring in their own "hyperbaric witness" to counter what was presented by the prosecution.

I didn't read the Maltese dive regulations. Do they really not allow individuals with proper compressors to fill tanks?

 

[Miyaru]

Here's another article, where the author summarizes and translates the judgement to English.

Summary of the Judgement - Christine Gauci's fatal accident and initial outcome of the prosecution of her buddy. - divinginfo.mt

Divinginfo.mt would first of all like to express again condolences to the Family of Ms Christine Gauci who died following a dive in Mgarr ix-Xini, Gozo in January 2020. Unfortunately her relatives and friends may have been brought back the ugly memory of the incident and her unfortunate demise...

www.divinginfo.mt

There is an interesting detail in there:

however the inflation valve was found to be defective and self-inflating

That defect combined with an ill-fitting drysuit explains her buoyancy problems....