Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park

[Wookie]

Yeah, I'm sure she got a kindly worded message of "please stop commenting on the case on facebook"

Kindly. You funny.

 

[lowflyer]

So let's look at the defense she foolishly presented in another public forum before being advised to stop. Now imagine her expanding on that as she explains to her agency why she is not at fault:

"The person who is at fault is the other student, Bob, whom I had allowed to take pictures on a training dive. My student, Bob, was the only person who was in a position to rescue the deceased because I was not nearby and not paying attention to either of them."​

She's a piece of work. Her defense should be mental incapacity.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

So let's look at the defense she foolishly presented in another public forum before being advised to stop. Now imagine her expanding on that as she explains to her agency why she is not at fault:

"The person who is at fault is the other student, Bob, whom I had allowed to take pictures on a training dive. My student, Bob, was the only person who was in a position to rescue the deceased because I was not nearby and not paying attention to either of them."​

That added twist in context is very enlightening isn't it? It points out just how laughably stupid her Facebook post was. If she truly believes that logic, insanity is probably her best defense.

 

[TheAvatar]

That added twist in context is very enlightening isn't it? It points out just how laughably stupid her Facebook post was. If she truly believes that logic, insanity is probably her best defense.

Denial avoids guilt and the host of emotions and consequences that would accompany... conscious and subconscious motivations are strong for her to believe her obviously false claim.

 

[Seaweed Doc]

Have we done the parts where:

Instructors not certified to instruct what they were teaching (drysuit diving).

That's a complicated issue. The suit suggests Snow wasn't a dry suit instructor. It states she didn't get dry suit instructor certified as part of her OWSI course. It's possible she got it later or self-certified based on experience.

If she wasn't a dry suit instructor and was issuing certifications fraudulently, I imagine the shop is at a higher exposure. They should know. (Though I suppose Snow could have lied. The folks at my LDS knew me for years before I became an instructor and never asked me to prove my credentials.)

 

[Seaweed Doc]

I said in a previous post that I would have some questions if I were the defandant's lawyer....in this case I'm talking about the instructor, not the dive shop.

How did the deceased diver represent her experience level ? Were details provided or did she present as a certified diver only ?

Why did she go to the expense of buying a drysuit for the course ? Was she clear that she had never used one before ?

Was the instructor familiar with the crushed neoprene Brooks drysuit ? Did she mistakenly assume that it would act more like a wetsuit and not be subject to a severe suit squeeze at depth ?

Lots of good questions here. However, some won't help the defendant Snow.

On experience: I believe it is a PADI standard that instructors in AOW and other specialty courses evaluate the student's background and knowledge prior to diving. It's up to the instructor to do this.

On the dry suit: I imagine she bought it because she was friggin' cold on the prior dive, and the suit alleges she was encouraged to do so by Liston or Snow, who then facilitated the sale.

Assuming the instructor was qualified to teach dry suit, she should have been familiar with all styles of dry suit. Suit materials are a big part of the course. If she wasn't qualified to teach dry suit but was anyway, well that's not helping her case.

 

[boulderjohn]

That's a complicated issue. The suit suggests Snow wasn't a dry suit instructor. It states she didn't get dry suit instructor certified as part of her OWSI course. It's possible she got it later or self-certified based on experience.

If she wasn't a dry suit instructor and was issuing certifications fraudulently, I imagine the shop is at a higher exposure. They should know. (Though I suppose Snow could have lied. The folks at my LDS knew me for years before I became an instructor and never asked me to prove my credentials.)

You cannot become a certified drysuit specialty instructor with OWSI. As an MSDT, she could have become a drysuit specialty instructor legitimately during moths of diving in Montana, when she would have had ample opportunity to become a drysuit whiz. However, a drysuit whiz would have absolutely known that the planned dive could not be done without the ability inflate the suit.

If she were not a legitimate PADI instructor, she could not issue PADI certifications at all. In one case I know, a shop (in Florida, IIRC) was issuing fake PADI cards after the classes.

If you look up Aquastrophics, you will find a dive operator who will give you a certification card for any agency you like--just tell him it is a replacement card and identify the agency you want. You will also find all sorts of information about what they offer, including online nitrox courses. They will also tell you they will offer cheap online classes that can be used in lieu of the academic portion of the OW classes for other agencies, which is not true. they have been doing this for at least 15 years, and they are apparently still doing it. What happened is that the owner was a NAUI instructor who got expelled by NAUI, so he just created his own agency, which is not considered legitimate by anyone except his students. I have not checked in years, but the last time I did, the listed company headquarters appeared to be a vacant lot. I contacted the Attorney General for Arizona years ago, and apparently it is all legal--or at least the AG was not interested in pursuing it.

 

[KevinNM]

Just out of curiosity -- is the Plantiffs' attorney (Concannon) the same lawyer that represented Dive Rite\Lamartek in the Wes Skiles litigation?

He’s apparently one of the people who you should consider hiring in a diving lawsuit, whether plaintiff or defendant. Name comes up fairly often in these cases.

 

[Scuba Client]

This boils down to an instructor who was too eager to get one dive in before dark to follow any of the most basic dive safety protocols. This operation needs its ass handed to it and spanked so bad nobody will ever be so lax again.

You only have to read instructor manual protocols and realize it's become a bureaucratic mess when it comes to critiquing certain behaviors. The standards have dropped. Anyone can buy a c-card. My method of evaluating potential Divemasters and Instructors is to give them a water aspiration test just before they perform an out-of-air situation. You hand them your octopus that doesn't work properly and breathes more water than air. If they bolt to the surface they fail. If they signal out of air and hand it back to you while switching back to their primary they pass. Otherwise psychometric testing.

 

[Lostdiver71]

It is frequently just not practical. Additionally, each of the courses has detailed instructor directions and standards. The instructor is supposed to have extensive experience in the subject area of the class before hand, so that instructor should be able to use the guidelines with ease. Here are some examples of classes I am certified to teach for which it was impractical for me to do an internship, with my living in Colorado as a key factor.

• I am certified to teach dive propulsion vehicles (scooters) by PADI. Before obtaining that certification, I earned 3 DPV certifications from 2 different non-PADI agencies, including certification for the use of a DPV in a cave. I do not know another PADI DPV instructor in my area. I own 2 DPVs, so I am able to teach it. I do not know a PADI instructor in my area who owns a single DPV.
• I am certified to teach the PADI wreck diving course, which is a far too easy course that does nothing really technical. I have no idea how many wrecks I have dived over the years. There are no wrecks in Colorado, so I only teach it when I am in Florida. I don't do it often, but the demand arises from time to time.
• As I prepared to lead a group trip to Cozumel, the shop manager advised me that one of the customers wanted to get certified for night diving. The night diving course is very easy, and I have done countless night dives around the world. No one in the shop was certified to teach the night diving course. Why not? Most instructors would be qualified. The reason is that you have to pay a fee to get the certification, and no one wants to pay that fee for a course they will never teach. So I paid my fee to get certified, and the student I taught remains the only person I have ever heard of taking that class. It cost me more to certify than I earned teaching it.

Living in South Florida you would think it would be easy to audit classes as an instructor, unfortunately when I have tried in the past I have run into many obstacles although the main one was Instructors and shops not wanting to teach the competition their techniques. I have not tried recently because I am not currently in teaching status but I would love to work for free to learn once I regain teaching status. I was fortunate when I got my first job in the industry because I worked for a boat that hosted a lot of out of town groups that came down for their check out dives so I learned a lot from some very experienced instructors.

Not sure I agree with this. Wearing two wetsuits is not uncommon. In fact some are designed almost that way with the farmer john and top overlapping. I used to dive a 1.5 under a 3 mil when our water would get really cold, until I realized open cell suits are damn near as warm as a drysuit.

Yes some wetsuits are designed to be worn together, I had a custom set that was designed that way so it could be used anywhere from warm Florida waters to cold water in the Pacific as I had some trips planned for the West coast that never happened due to an unexpected injury.