Sandra Stewart sues a whole lot more folks

[Wookie]

Gotcha! Thanks for the correction. I missed that somewhere in there. Has the footage been entered into evidence?

Man, I'm missing a whole slew of documents it seems.

There have been so many threads now I can't remember what is what. I'll look for the call sheet.

 

[cerich]

Aside from the obvious fact that Stewart himself is the producer, I would imagine that there’s no producer involved or safety divers involved because the activity wasn’t actually related to filming as part of his documentary.

These dives may not have actually been part of the documentary he was filming. As such, there would be no “studio” involvement at all, hence no mandated protocol for insurance, safety divers, surface support, etc. Essentially, he was doing training dives independent from any of his professional activities.

I’m not sure how the legal eagles will address that. Entertainment law can be a bitch, especially from a liability standpoint.

The day of death they were diving to film sawtooth sharks, that is well reported. That they were also “finishing up” the course has been floated by many sources.

 

[Wookie]

The day of death they were diving to film sawtooth sharks, that is well reported. That they were also “finishing up” the course has been floated by many sources.

It's important to the entity that filled Stewart's gas cylinders if he was a student or not. If he was a student, then the cylinders filled with a hypoxic mix would have been on his instructor. But if he was not a student, and whomever filled his cylinders gave him a mix he was uncertified for, well then they might be hanging out.

So it is in the best interest of the cylinder filling entity to push the theory that he was a student, thereby transferring the gas liability to the instructor.

Even so, if he was a student, he wasn't a hypoxic student, therefore the gas was inappropriate anyway.

 

[Wookie]

As I've said a number of times, there were multiple multiple ways that Stewart could have lived. It was a long and complex chain that resulted in his death. No one person was at fault, but any one of multiple people could have prevented it.

All any of them had to do was not do something stupid.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

The day of death they were diving to film sawtooth sharks, that is well reported. That they were also “finishing up” the course has been floated by many sources.

Correct on the smalltooth sawfish; they are known to be sighted around the Queen of Nassau wreck and Stewart was advised as such. The hell of it is there are places to find them that don't involve multiple 200'+ tech dives, although it's probably best those remain off the map to keep boatloads of goobers away from them. The researchers I've talked to have done most of their tagging work in parts of Florida Bay that are wading depth.

 

[Wookie]

Correct on the smalltooth sawfish; they are known to be sighted around the Queen of Nassau wreck and Stewart was advised as such. The hell of it is there are places to find them that don't involve multiple 200'+ tech dives, although it's probably best those remain off the map to keep boatloads of goobers away from them. The researchers I've talked to have done most of their tagging work in parts of Florida Bay that are wading depth.

Or Tampa Bay. NOAA friends work with FWRI tagging there, and have wonderful photos before they wade in and screw up the vis.

 

[cerich]

my personal view, we shall see what the courts feel later.

Fault- Production company as they did not follow applicable laws and safety for a commercial dive
Fault- The Captain for a variety of reasons
Probable fault if indeed it was also going to be a finish up dive for the course- Sotis
Fault- Rob, he knew better.

 

[divezonescuba]

Wasn’t that a hypoxic certification that they wanted retracted?

 

[kafkaland]

Without going into the particulars, what stands out about this accident is how easy it could have been avoided if any of the major players (Sotis, Horizon, the deceased) had at any time spoken up and just said "This is crazy - I'm not going along with this". Be it the overall dive plan, or the ill-fated dive. All had the expertise to make that call, but no one did. Why not? Most likely, everyone deferred to the others as experts in their own right. The well-known CCR instructor surely knew what is student is capable of. The big-shot movie producer and his company has of course planned it all out and determined to be safe. And the dive support operation has done this many times, they know what they're doing and keep it all safe. And yet, in retrospect, none of them did. And no one spoke up.

 

[Stoo]

It has not been established that Sotis was instructing Stewart for that series of dives. Sotis was not compensated monetarily for them.

The card was printed, but he had not completed the last 2 days of training, so the requirements had not been met.

Good we got that cleared up!

I suspect that this may be complicated in that any self-respecting shop would love to have the publicity associated wit one of these films, so maybe a "contra" deal was at play... no money paid, but exposure. Win/win as they say.

Until things went sideways.