Parents sue Boy Scouts for 2011 negligence death

[boulderjohn]

Somewhere between difficult and impossible.

Given normal distances and human reaction time, by the time the instructor figured out that something was going on, it was already too late to keep them together. Someone would need to be chased and someone would need to be ignored.

If a person bolts to the surface from 15 feet, do you really think you are going to catch him by chasing him to the surface? what level of genius does it take to take the others up with you when you surface to check on him?

As for the pool session that was skipped.....

Before the first dive of an OW pool session, or before the first part of a pool DSD, I tell them that we will work on basic skills in the shallow end of the pool, and we will not go to the deep end of the pool until we have done so. I explain the danger of bolting to the surface, and I explain that doing the first session in the shallow end, where they can stand up if they have a problem, is done in large part so that any problem with fear can be taken care of then. I explain the dangers of bolting to the surface carefully, and I tell them we are not going to the deep end of the pool until I am reasonably sure that won't happen with any of them.

I am absolutely stunned by the people in this thread that seem to think skipping the required shallow water pool session and going right to 15 feet in a lake with poor visibility was a reasonable instructor decision.

 

[flots am]

Or when one bolts and as the instructor is reacting to that one the other may have an asthma attack due to the stress of the situation, the stress of being underwater, the residual effects of a respiratory infection that was lied about in order to put the kid in the water? Again it's why pool only, one to one with kids, and maybe with adults as well. The more of these I do the more one to one or two to one only with a CA makes sense. And none in open water. Actual pool only.

I'm with you on that one. Pool only. Shallow end.

However if DSD in OW is going to exist, there's no way it should be more than 1:1.

I'd prefer it didn't exist at all.

flots.

 

[Wookie]

Again- I agree the ratio is a problem without a certified assistant.

But in this case the instructors judgment and violations killed a child not the ratio per se.

Interesting that you heard at DEMA about the overweighting and BCD issues that the attorney is pretending we're not a factor.

I am not a lawyer but you are...

A criminal case determines straight up guilt or innocence, but doesn't a civil trial determine the percentage of blame assigned to each party? For instance, couldn't the judge or jury say that the instructor was 60% liable because he (in his judgement) maybe overweighted the student (which happens on almost every Open Water class we read about on SB) and put him in a lake which wasn't "pool like conditions" AFAIK, PADI doesn't require DSD in a pool as many are stating, but it must be in pool like conditions, and then assign BSA 10% because the BSA equipment wasn't maintained properly if we believe the rumors, and assign PADI the remaining 30% for inadequate standards?

I ask because I don't fully understand the law, especially in Utah.

If the judge or jury finds that the dead kid was worth 4 million to the parents, would that mean that the instructor would cough up 60%, BSA 10% and PADI 30%? I'm not trying to be flippant either. The instructor has a liability limit of a million, I expect. How would he make up the balance. How does this really work?

 

[flots am]

. . .
Deleted.

Getting tired of being Captain Obvious.

 

[Omisson]

I am not a lawyer but you are...

A criminal case determines straight up guilt or innocence, but doesn't a civil trial determine the percentage of blame assigned to each party? For instance, couldn't the judge or jury say that the instructor was 60% liable because he (in his judgement) maybe overweighted the student (which happens on almost every Open Water class we read about on SB) and put him in a lake which wasn't "pool like conditions" AFAIK, PADI doesn't require DSD in a pool as many are stating, but it must be in pool like conditions, and then assign BSA 10% because the BSA equipment wasn't maintained properly if we believe the rumors, and assign PADI the remaining 30% for inadequate standards?

I ask because I don't fully understand the law, especially in Utah.

If the judge or jury finds that the dead kid was worth 4 million to the parents, would that mean that the instructor would cough up 60%, BSA 10% and PADI 30%? I'm not trying to be flippant either. The instructor has a liability limit of a million, I expect. How would he make up the balance. How does this really work?

A civil trial may be bifurcated - first whether someone is liable (at fault). It's possible a jury says no one was- accident. Or that the parents of the student are at fault (lied on medical - asthma was the primary cause). Or that someone or group of someone's are responsible (then what percentage of fault they have).

Then IF someone other than the victim is at fault- what the damages are go into the next phase of the trial- because if no one is at fault or the victim or parents are there is no need to talk damages.

But Every jurisdiction is different. Some are comparative fault (percentage) in some jurisdictions if the victim contributed at all they toss all liability against third parties.

Also in some jurisdictions liability is "joint and several" meaning if one party is 99% and the other 1% they are both responsible for the whole award and then can sue each other in indemnity to pro rate responsibility but either can be made to pay the whole award (hence suing deep pockets even if they have little or no liability- because even 1% gets them stuck for the whole bill).

I bet Utah is like that- thus the urgency in keeping PADI in the lawsuit.

Some jurisdictions will not attach assets for an award beyond insurance limits- but they certainly can.

 

[Scott]

Most of us seem to have figured out why and how to reduce the ratio - as we are required to do by PADI's standards - to a level that we can deal with. Why didn't this instructor do that?

That would be a good question to ask him and I'm sure it will be asked during the trial.
I can tell you from experience at this camp and program on any given week the DSD was quite popular. This may have been one of those days where X number of participants / Y number instructors in Z time slots was the focus.
It could have been the program had been using a max 4:1 for the last 20 years without incident and that day even with a 3:1 the outcome was tragic.
Maybe he did reduce ratios from 4:1 to 3:1 because conditions were not the same as they were two hours earlier.

 

[Omisson]

Come on now, you called the other attorney out for not answering a direct question, so answer it without all of the fluff. You can't be saying that someone will always exhibit the same behavior in open water that they exhibited in the pool, or are you? So assuming that he did all of the required pre-OW work, how is an instructor to remain within standards if a student bolts and another remains stationary?

But that's the whole point- there was no pool training first. So we will never know.

Again -I agree that a CA is the better method for a DSD- and a ratio of 4:1 could only work with assistants. But given all the things the instructor did wrong- how can you justify saying it was a problem with the ratio not the instructor.

 

[boulderjohn]

Come on now, you called the other attorney out for not answering a direct question, so answer it without all of the fluff. You can't be saying that someone will always exhibit the same behavior in open water that they exhibited in the pool, or are you? So assuming that he did all of the required pre-OW work, how is an instructor to remain within standards if a student bolts and another remains stationary?

Training in a pool does not guarantee that a student will not bolt in the open water, but introducing skills in shallow water is in large part designed to lessen that probability. A student who has learned skills in an environment in which bolting just means standing up will almost always achieve enough comfort to avoid doing so when later taken to open water. If you skip that required step, you dramatically increase the potential for bolting.

Of course, it's still just a possibility. I bet that if you do it the way it was done in this case 100 times, you won't get more than 9-10 people bolting. I bet that just about every time that happens, you can go to the surface, talk to the bolter, and go back down to where you left the others. You will be fine just about every time, even though you are deviating from standards.

I used the word deviating intentionally. What I just described has a name. It is called the normalization of deviance. This happens in all kinds of areas of endeavor. You violate a norm of safety, and things work out. You do it again, and again it is OK. Before long you are deviating from safety standards as a normal part of your work day. And it keeps working out fine.

Until it doesn't.

 

[ktomlinson]

If a person bolts to the surface from 15 feet, do you really think you are going to catch him by chasing him to the surface? what level of genius does it take to take the others up with you when you surface to check on him?

As for the pool session that was skipped.....

Before the first dive of an OW pool session, or before the first part of a pool DSD, I tell them that we will work on basic skills in the shallow end of the pool, and we will not go to the deep end of the pool until we have done so. I explain the danger of bolting to the surface, and I explain that doing the first session in the shallow end, where they can stand up if they have a problem, is done in large part so that any problem with fear can be taken care of then. I explain the dangers of bolting to the surface carefully, and I tell them we are not going to the deep end of the pool until I am reasonably sure that won't happen with any of them.

I am absolutely stunned by the people in this thread that seem to think skipping the required shallow water pool session and going right to 15 feet in a lake with poor visibility was a reasonable instructor decision.

I've been following this thread, who said it was reasonable to skip a required pool session?

Training them in the shallow end first is probably a good way to reduce their anxiety, but people have died by just standing up and experiencing an AGE.

And yeah, I've caught people that were bolting from 15' before, you haven't?

 

[boulderjohn]

I've been following this thread, who said it was reasonable to skip a required pool session?

Everyone, including Brian Carney in the SDI/TDI letter, who have said that no standards were violated by the instructor that day. This was only one of several standards that were violated.