New level of insta-buddy trouble

[wedivebc]

That's not at all what I'm saying ... I'm saying that charters have a responsibility to their clients to not put them in situations they are clearly not qualified to deal with. And if it takes lawsuits to prevent businesses from placing profits over safety, then so be it. Are you suggesting it's better to just let these guys take people out and kill themselves out of sheer ignorance?

How does an operator determine that? You step on a boat to dive, I see a c-card. I have seen some pretty shabby divers holding some pretty high ranking cards (but thats another story). What makes a charter operator qualified to determine if someone is good enough or not? Bottom line is they rely on the agency who issue the cert card. It is not the charter operators job it is the certifying agency.

 

[Darnold9999]

The really troublsome part of this decision is this one line:

A ‘buddy’ assumes the responsibility for monitoring and assisting the other member of the ‘buddy’ team at all times

If the court has decided, that a buddy "assumes the reponsibility" that can be read that you as buddy have a positive duty to monitor and assist at all times and if you don't you can be held liable for failing to have met the "duty of care" of a 'dive buddy'.

Don't know US law, but if I were involved in such a case you better believe this case would be cited as support for such an arguement - even here in Canada the case would be cited. Would only be minor support for the argument, but given a fact situation with a very sympathetic victim and a not so sympathetic buddy ... the thin edge of the wedge???

 

[nyprrthd]

Its like that saying "If someone told you to jump off a bridge, would you?".

You evidently know my mother!

Plan your dive. Dive your plan. Don't do anything beyond your level of experience, unless you are with a qualified instructor. Always dive with a buddy. Discuss the plan with your buddy before getting in the water. The recreational limit is 130 feet! These things were drilled into our heads when we were getting certified. The diver was at fault as much as the operation.

It is a good example for the rest of us. NEVER be intimidated into doing a dive that doesn't feel right. It's much better to sit on the boat, lose your money, and live to dive another day. If the other divers on the boat are very experienced they will appreciate your concerns. If they mock you, write them off as macho *******s. Just as there are scary divers, there are even scarier dive operations that just want your money, and "hope" you come back alive.

Ok, time to get off of my soap box.

 

[Darnold9999]

IF and this is a big IF the courts find that a dive buddy has a duty of care then the Good Samaritan law does not apply - you would have a duty of care.

What exactly that duty is, is unclear, but IF you were to use this case it is to monitor at all times and render assistance if required.

Thinking about it I suspect that a court might find a buddy negligent if the buddy did not provide assistance for their buddy to thier level of their training. Probably a very low standard - ie pass the octo, but some standard.

Needs further thought.

Would be interested in seeing that article ItsBruce

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

How does an operator determine that? You step on a boat to dive, I see a c-card. I have seen some pretty shabby divers holding some pretty high ranking cards (but thats another story). What makes a charter operator qualified to determine if someone is good enough or not? Bottom line is they rely on the agency who issue the cert card. It is not the charter operators job it is the certifying agency.

You see a C-card ... it says "Open Water Diver".

Do you do a dive where the dive plan is to take this person to 145 fsw, with planned decompression stops at 20 feet and 10 feet?

C'mon Dave ... does that look to you like a responsible dive plan for anyone in the charter business?

This has nothing to do with determining the person's skill level beforehand. You simply don't take an OW certified diver on that dive ... period. Doing so is negligence, no matter how you try to spin it.

Now, factor in common-sense safety practices. Dives that require deco are overhead dives ... YOU HAVE TO PLAN FOR EMERGENCIES in cases like this ... because divers will not have the option to surface without serious consequences. A simple thing like a hang tank (or two, or three) would have prevented this accident. It's common practice. Most dive operations ... even in your area ... put hang tanks in the water on any planned deep dive, even when they are not planned deco dives.

To respond to the person who asked why the diver who was approached (and signaled the deceased to surface) didn't assist him to the surface ... if he had a deco obligation, he could not do so without risking injury to himself, and without abandoning his own dive buddy, who also by then would have had a deco obligation.

THAT'S WHY you're not supposed to do these kind of dives on recreational scuba gear and rental tanks ... you've cut the safety margins so low that if anything goes wrong, the consequences are severe.

This dive simply should not have happened ... if even the DM is running out of gas, then anyone with an ounce of brains could see that the dive was poorly planned and even more poorly executed. Dive professionals assume a level of care for their clients ... and simply must do better than put themselves and their clients in that sort of situation.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[nyprrthd]

You see a C-card ... it says "Open Water Diver".

Do you do a dive where the dive plan is to take this person to 145 fsw, with planned decompression stops at 20 feet and 10 feet?

C'mon Dave ... does that look to you like a responsible dive plan for anyone in the charter business?

This has nothing to do with determining the person's skill level beforehand. You simply don't take an OW certified diver on that dive ... period. Doing so is negligence, no matter how you try to spin it.

Now, factor in common-sense safety practices. Dives that require deco are overhead dives ... YOU HAVE TO PLAN FOR EMERGENCIES in cases like this ... because divers will not have the option to surface without serious consequences. A simple thing like a hang tank (or two, or three) would have prevented this accident. It's common practice. Most dive operations ... even in your area ... put hang tanks in the water on any planned deep dive, even when they are not planned deco dives.

To respond to the person who asked why the diver who was approached (and signaled the deceased to surface) didn't assist him to the surface ... if he had a deco obligation, he could not do so without risking injury to himself, and without abandoning his own dive buddy, who also by then would have had a deco obligation.

THAT'S WHY you're not supposed to do these kind of dives on recreational scuba gear and rental tanks ... you've cut the safety margins so low that if anything goes wrong, the consequences are severe.

This dive simply should not have happened ... if even the DM is running out of gas, then anyone with an ounce of brains could see that the dive was poorly planned and even more poorly executed. Dive professionals assume a level of care for their clients ... and simply must do better than put themselves and their clients in that sort of situation.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

:35: :35: :35: :35: :35: :35: :35: :35: :35:

 

[BigJetDriver]

Great post, Bob! You really hit the nail on the head here! By accepting the conditions for the dive without proper preparation for it, the operator set the stage for tragedy in this case.

When the brown stuff hit the rotating device, it was already too late. There were no "tools" available to "fix" anything. :doctor:

 

[wedivebc]

You see a C-card ... it says "Open Water Diver".

Do you do a dive where the dive plan is to take this person to 145 fsw, with planned decompression stops at 20 feet and 10 feet?

C'mon Dave ... does that look to you like a responsible dive plan for anyone in the charter business?

This has nothing to do with determining the person's skill level beforehand. You simply don't take an OW certified diver on that dive ... period. Doing so is negligence, no matter how you try to spin it.

Now, factor in common-sense safety practices. Dives that require deco are overhead dives ... YOU HAVE TO PLAN FOR EMERGENCIES in cases like this ... because divers will not have the option to surface without serious consequences. A simple thing like a hang tank (or two, or three) would have prevented this accident. It's common practice. Most dive operations ... even in your area ... put hang tanks in the water on any planned deep dive, even when they are not planned deco dives.

To respond to the person who asked why the diver who was approached (and signaled the deceased to surface) didn't assist him to the surface ... if he had a deco obligation, he could not do so without risking injury to himself, and without abandoning his own dive buddy, who also by then would have had a deco obligation.

THAT'S WHY you're not supposed to do these kind of dives on recreational scuba gear and rental tanks ... you've cut the safety margins so low that if anything goes wrong, the consequences are severe.

This dive simply should not have happened ... if even the DM is running out of gas, then anyone with an ounce of brains could see that the dive was poorly planned and even more poorly executed. Dive professionals assume a level of care for their clients ... and simply must do better than put themselves and their clients in that sort of situation.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I see the point in that particular case but I am always leery of making dive operators more responsible than the divers for what happens underwater. As you know I have a close personal relationship with a couple of dive operators in this area and I know this is a tough business to sustain. More litgation will not help the diver or the operator. People need to become accountable for themselves. What open water diver does not know the limits of their training? It should be the divers responsability to say "I don't feel good about this" . Not the operator. Now I agree someone with an OW card should not be allowed to dive to 145ft especially without a bona-fide buddy but be careful about opening the door to liabilty, it is much harder to close.

 

[The Horn]

Sadly the only recourse the public has is after the fatality. As with alot of deaths there are way too many "if's". The whole dive charter the man died on sounds like a farce, from the novice diver asking to join the charter to the fellow divers who let the novice dive and also rendered no assistance. For the more experienced divers they obviously felt confidant enough to dive completly unsafely with less than adequate dive preparation and safety stop measures in place, probably because "we do it like this all the time". Was there even a standby diver on board or in the water just in case?

Money is usually a very big factor in alot of the shady and sloppy run buisnesses. Every one trying to make a buck.

Two of my brothers were marlin fishing in mexico. Out on a charter where they were assured all was the best. Hooked into an 11 footer....my brother is strapped in to the seat and is subsequently dragged across the deck as no bolts where in to hold the seat to the deck. My other brother grabbed him and the seat and desperatly held on for the 1 hour battle with the fish yelling to cut the f....ng thing free while the operator kept yelling no speek english...you catch fish. Even when my brother switched to spanish they recieved no help.....operator takes a percentage of the trophy fish to feed his family, why would he let it go?? Had someone died by being hauled overboard what would have happened?

The Marlin charter had no buisness operating as unprepared as they were, the diving charter also had no buisness operating.

I guess it depends on your perspective. We have lots of drivers that have no buisness behind the wheel for some types of driving, say highway, they go anyway. There are lots of divers that have no buisness on dives below 10 feet but you'll see them upside down at 60' tearing coral and the likes apart. Both people have a certification so whats stopping them......for the motoristolice for the diver:the charter. on the flip side both individuals should have the intelligence to stop themselves: sadly most don't.

Liability should not scare anyone away from rendering assistance to a fellow diver. If a divers buddy stated in court that he refused his regulator resulting in his buddies death as he was scared he would become liable in the event something happened. He should realize then that his actions (or lack of) killed his buddy and he should be alot more than liable.

 

[nolatom]

I looked at this federal court case, and appreciate the comments above, which demonstrate the tug-of-war between the concepts of individual responsibility of certified divers on the one hand (with which I'm philosophically sympathetic) and the idea that the dive op "owed Tancredi a duty to provide a reasonably safe dive plan", which many above agree with, within limits.

I think the good judge let Tancredi off too easy on his contributory negligence, probably out of understandable sympathy for his parents (no spouse or kids here, and Tancredi, at age 33, wasn't a big earner, otherwise the damages would've been much higher than the $387K reduced to 309K awarded). He found that T, as a certified diver, "should've at least partially appreciated the (dangers of a 145' 20" dive)..and ..considered that it might be beyond his capabilities".

What he says next, I disagree with philosophically: "Once T boarded ..it's not reasonable to presume that he could have made the choice not to dive, even if he wasgiven some warning by the dive master. Once the boat left shore, T's only choice was to go on the deep dive with the others or sit it our, clearly a choice T could not be expected to make"

Oh, REALLY? T had been certified for 7 years, had dived Hawaii before, opinion doesn't say how many dives he had, or how deep, or size of tank or whether single tank (probably single 80 though). He decides to go buddyless to 145 feet? And brings a camera (according to the opinion, he took some pictures)? Many of us would say his contribution to this tragedy was more than 20%.

Also, no defense of waiver of liability was discussed. Wonder if he never signed one?

I've been on a single-tank dive to 140' (Hole in the Wall, Jupiter). Everyone on the boat had more experience than me (I had about 100 dives and a Rescue card). I sought and took advice from everyone and watched my gauges like a hawk.

Bottom line, someone should've talked with this guy on the way out, and he as a result should've decided to pass up this dive, whether on the boat or no. That's the trouble with only a one-mile ride out to a deep dive, not enough time to "interview" each other. Come to the Gulf of Mexico, a 130' dive is 20 miles offshore, you have LOTS of time to think about it and talk about it. I once took a novice diver down to 100' on his first ocean dive, but we'd really talked it over first, agreed on signals, how to check gauges, and "either of us can thumb this dive for any reason, no guilt, no questions asked". He did fine. Would I have taken him to 145? No way, nohow.

The usual disclaimer--I'm a lawyer, but this is not legal advice, yada, yada, and a federal judge's opinion, right, wrong, or somewhere in between, carries way more weight than my opinion anyway.