Parents sue Boy Scouts for 2011 negligence death

[cerich]

let me ask...did throwing the instructor under the bus change anything? Nope..sure not. PADI still got sued. There is case law as you said and lawyers are going to chase that money, it is what they do.

Should they defend the instructor? No. They should of however come out very strongly why they were throwing him out, not the silent treatment. The lawsuit aside, there needs to be examples to keep other instructors in line, today because of fear of a lawsuit the reasons why instructors are thrown out of agencies are hidden, IMHO that is a problem unto itself.

Frankly, it is past time that the agencies stop blindly following the safe legal advice they are getting and take a "winnable" lawsuit to trial and stop the sue, settle money train for the lawyers that specialize in dive litigation.(sorry guys, I like many of you but...) The instructors having insurance makes it too easy and tempting to sue and too easy to just settle versus risk a higher verdict. We are setting up the instructors to pay higher and higher rates and piss off the insurance companies all at the same time, it's stupid.

In short, we need leaders that are willing to fight, not just bureaucrats that run publishing, I mean training agencies.

Let me give some background and ask you a hypothetical question.he

A couple of years ago, two divemasters working voluntarily with a dive club that chartered a boat for a three tank dive took role call after each dive to make sure everyone in the club made it back. Incredibly, they missed one of them after the first dive and never knew he was missing until another boat picked him up drifting in the waves late in the afternoon. The two DMs were sued. PADI was included in the suit under the claim that the DMs were "agents and/or employees" of PADI. PADI had nothing to do with that incident. They did not hire the DMs for that job. They did not tell them what to do. There were no standards involved. Taking the role accurately is not taught in the DM class. PADI argued that the DMs were not their agents and/or employees, but the jury disagreed and found them liable for $2 million.

Think about the precedent for a second. Under the rationale of that case, every single time a graduate of a PADI program screws up and gets in a lawsuit, PADI could automatically be included in the suit and automatically be found guilty, even if they didn't have a blessed thing to do with the events that unfolded. It would be like successfully suing a medical school every time one of their graduates is guilty of malpractice. That would put them into bankruptcy in short order. Since then PADI has been scrambling to make sure that the statement that none of their graduates is an agent of theirs is everywhere. Other agencies are similarly scrambling. I know SSI is doing the same thing now.

So what happened in this case? If you read the claim, PADI was included in the lawsuit on the allegation that the instructor was acting as "an agent/and or employee" of PADI. He was not, but the DMs in the earlier case were not, either.

So here is my hypothetical question. You are the President and CEO of an agency, and you learn that one of the instructors your agency certified 20 years ago really screwed up badly, violating all sorts of standards in a case in which a student died. You are being sued for $5 million on the theory that this instructor was acting as an "agent and/or employee" of your organization. The instructor is guilty as sin and will certainly lose. If you do not fight the accusation that he is an agent of your organization, you will therefore lose $5 million automatically. You have no other defense available to you (unless you can think of one right now). What do you do? Do you fight the accusation, or do you tell your Board of Directors, "I know that this will set a bad precedent and we will certainly lose millions of dollars. I know we will lose millions of dollars every time one of our instructors screws up and violates standards. I don't care! We are going to stand by him!"

 

[Steve_C]

Did a PADI DSD course a few years ago in Hawaii. OW was a beach entry after an hour long pool session. I was taught inflator use. I was taught how to enter and leave the water for a beach entry. I was taught everything needed to complete the dive.

 

[boulderjohn]

let me ask...did throwing the instructor under the bus change anything?

What do you mean by throwing him under the bus? It looks like his violations of standards were many and serious. What would you have done instead. Be specific. This guy committed serious violations, and his defense is that YOU were responsible. Would you say, "Yes, we're responsible because we always support our instructors in legal situations like this, no matter how they screw up. We will gladly accept the blame, even though he screwed up"?

Nope..sure not. PADI still got sued.

Yes, and they got out of it for a small settlement, nothing like the $2 million they got socked for in the other case when they stayed with two DMs who also screwed up. So it sure did change things.

Should they defend the instructor? No. They should of however come out very strongly why they were throwing him out, not the silent treatment.

Come on. Nobody does that, anywhere. When I was a school administrator, any disciplinary action taken against a teacher was private, unless the teacher chose to make it public.

Frankly, it is past time that the agencies stop blindly following the safe legal advice they are getting ...

[sarcasm]You bet. Everybody should stop following legal advice.[/sarcasm]

 

[Zippsy]

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.

To be fair, I believe that Brian was making a deliberate falsehood for marketing reasons. I can't believe the head of any training agency is so stupid as to think no standards were broken, including some of the most basic ones to the program.

 

[tursiops]

To be fair, I believe that Brian was making a deliberate falsehood for marketing reasons. I can't believe the head of any training agency is so stupid as to think no standards were broken, including some of the most basic ones to the program.

I can't believe Brian would deliberately lie in a situation like this; he is a high-integrity, upstanding guy. I would rather believe he was badly informed as to the details of the matter, and wrote his letter to get it out before DEMA...yes, for marketing reasons.

 

[boulderjohn]

I am a TDI instructor, so I would really like to know what he was thinking. I am absolutely at a loss right now.

 

[demed]

Two, Standards for the class make it so in the event of an emergency, a single instructor without CA with more than 2 students can't possibly mange the emergency and stay in standards (actually I have felt this way 18 years). This is a discussion the industry MUST have.

Three, one agency has proven they care about the money more than the instructor...and we should be surprised??? LOL

yeah, let's keep trolling happily until we are ready to have a conversation with adults.

The standards you accuse to "make impossible for the instructors to deal with an emergency" have been violated long before the emergency arose, and if the same standards were followed to the letter - including doing a session in confined water - it's highly unlikely would have led to the fatality that happened.

It looks like we're talking about a reading disability - a number of folks can only ready those parts of the standards the are useful to demonstrate ex post a thesis, but can't possibly internalize the parts that do not match the preconceived result of PADI being the source of all evils that affect the dive industry.

When it comes about caring more about the money than the instructor, apparently PADI should disregard whether the instructor violated one, ten, or innumerable standards, the instructor should be defended. Period. At least this is the argument that the president of the "integrity is our value" agency would like us to swallow.

Trolls keep tooting their own horns about how PADI is lenient here or there, or how PADI makes zero to hero instructors with no regard for safety or preparation, then when the same PADI demonstrates zero tolerance for standards violation, then PADI throws the instructor under the bus?

It seems that it's not PADI that is showing lack of coherence and integrity in this whole debate which, it's necessary to remind folks, still revolves about the circumstance that led to the death of a child.

---------- Post added November 25th, 2014 at 11:30 PM ----------

let me ask...did throwing the instructor under the bus change anything? Nope..sure not. PADI still got sued. There is case law as you said and lawyers are going to chase that money, it is what they do.

Keep talking about throwing the instructor under the bus - now you sound like a lawyer defending one of those poor Wall Street traders who squander half a billion or a billion on a short bet beyond their authorized limit, and their employers, being Goldman Sachs or another bank, fire them and decide not to defend him

Should they defend the instructor? No. They should of however come out very strongly why they were throwing him out, not the silent treatment. The lawsuit aside, there needs to be examples to keep other instructors in line, today because of fear of a lawsuit the reasons why instructors are thrown out of agencies are hidden, IMHO that is a problem unto itself.

So now, after crying about the poor instructor thrown under the bus, PADI is erring because it should have burnt the instructor on the stake, possibly after having placed him to the stocks (or pillory) for a while.

Frankly, it is past time that the agencies stop blindly following the safe legal advice they are getting and take a "winnable" lawsuit to trial and stop the sue, settle money train for the lawyers that specialize in dive litigation.(sorry guys, I like many of you but...) The instructors having insurance makes it too easy and tempting to sue and too easy to just settle versus risk a higher verdict. We are setting up the instructors to pay higher and higher rates and piss off the insurance companies all at the same time, it's stupid.

In short, we need leaders that are willing to fight, not just bureaucrats that run publishing, I mean training agencies.

Can you try to state this in plain english? tmy head hurts trying to interpret what you just wrote....

---------- Post added November 25th, 2014 at 11:32 PM ----------

I can't believe Brian would deliberately lie in a situation like this; he is a high-integrity, upstanding guy. I would rather believe he was badly informed as to the details of the matter, and wrote his letter to get it out before DEMA...yes, for marketing reasons.

High integrity and making false statements for maketing reasons in the same sentence. Note to self: check the dictionary for the word integrity

 

[Zippsy]

I can't believe Brian would deliberately lie in a situation like this; he is a high-integrity, upstanding guy. I would rather believe he was badly informed as to the details of the matter, and wrote his letter to get it out before DEMA...yes, for marketing reasons.

Possibly but I almost think I would prefer to think that he was just a prevaricating businessman than someone so incompetent that he would publish a letter bashing a competitor without doing even basic checks on the premise. The first I heard of this case was one member of this forum posted a snarky comment on a FB page that I moderate. I didn't know what he was talking about but it only took me a lot less than an hour to research many of the basic facts. Surely Brian would have at least gotten one of his assistants to do the same. Peace y'all.

 

[boulderjohn]

Should they defend the instructor? No. They should of however come out very strongly why they were throwing him out, not the silent treatment.

In my last reply, I forgot to mention that it is only secret to the general public. The instructor fully knows why he was expelled. If he wants to release that information, there is nothing stopping him.

 

[JohnN]

In my last reply, I forgot to mention that it is only secret to the general public. The instructor fully knows why he was expelled. If he wants to release that information, there is nothing stopping him.

We seem to have a fundamental disagreement with how guilt/responsibility is assigned. You seem comfortable that you know all the relevant details and applicable case law and that you can ipso facto assign guilt.

Wonderful for you. It would greatly simplify our legal system, think of the savings! We could all form a line outside your door and you could be emperor.

Wouldn't a more prudent choice (for you and PADI) to wait for those facts to be determined and then take action?