It's like firing a shotgun. You try to hit everyone you can.
Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park
- Thread starter Jim Lapenta
- Start date
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Reading the whole thing made me see red. I am so angry that poor girl had to go through this and then there was a coverup. I’m so glad Bob had a GoPro running that resulted in so much evidence.
I’ll not say what I’d like to happen to these people.
I’ll not say what I’d like to happen to these people.
wnissen
Contributor
I'm amazed that a shop allowed someone with only Junior Open Water to both correspond with new customers and assist in classes. There are all kinds of questions I wish I had known enough to ask in my Open Water and "Advanced" training, but you would never expect that the staff wouldn't even be certified in the equipment! Liston couldn't even have rented a drysuit from a lot of places, and here he was encouraging someone to buy one and assisting with the class.
EDIT: And the sun was setting? And they didn't do a predive briefing or safety checks? And they didn't put her weights in ditchable places? It just gets worse and worse and worse.
EDIT: 44 lbs of weight for a woman in a drysuit and none of it ditchable? Unreal.
EDIT: And the sun was setting? And they didn't do a predive briefing or safety checks? And they didn't put her weights in ditchable places? It just gets worse and worse and worse.
EDIT: 44 lbs of weight for a woman in a drysuit and none of it ditchable? Unreal.
kumimonster
Contributor
The word "unbelievable" is often used hyperbolically, but I am in complete agreement with @boulderjohn. If I read this in a diving magazine I would have been convinced it was artificially over the top to make some editorial point. The deceased's journal entry about her level of enthusiasm and excitement from the previous dive hints there was a lot of group energy and enthusiasm and excitement and, unfortunately, trust. What appears to be totally missing was professional supervision and tempering of exuberance and excitement. I don't know how easy it is to pierce the corporate veil in that state's courts, but unless the defense has an equally compelling brief of equally unbelievable facts backed up by video evidence, I hope they succeed.
Just to be clear about one part of this that is a bit deceptive...
They keep repeating that a person had not taken the class he or she was certified to teach. That is meaningless; it extremely common in all kinds of education. People can become qualified to teach something in many ways other than taking the specific class they are teaching. As an English teacher teaching in a high school, I usually taught classes I had not taken myself. For example, I taught a class named Tragedy, which included understanding the theory of tragedy and reading a variety classic tragedies. I had not taken the class I was teaching, but completing the coursework for a Ph.D in literature was deemed to be sufficient. Heck, I created a bunch of classes that did not exist until I taught them. The same would be true of most courses in most educational settings.
The same is true for scuba, and that includes the drysuit specialty. Someone who had been using a drysuit for years, with hundreds of dives in them, but had not taken the PADI introductory drysuit class, should not have to take (and pay for) a beginning class in order to teach it. (I am not saying that is what happened in this case.)
They keep repeating that a person had not taken the class he or she was certified to teach. That is meaningless; it extremely common in all kinds of education. People can become qualified to teach something in many ways other than taking the specific class they are teaching. As an English teacher teaching in a high school, I usually taught classes I had not taken myself. For example, I taught a class named Tragedy, which included understanding the theory of tragedy and reading a variety classic tragedies. I had not taken the class I was teaching, but completing the coursework for a Ph.D in literature was deemed to be sufficient. Heck, I created a bunch of classes that did not exist until I taught them. The same would be true of most courses in most educational settings.
The same is true for scuba, and that includes the drysuit specialty. Someone who had been using a drysuit for years, with hundreds of dives in them, but had not taken the PADI introductory drysuit class, should not have to take (and pay for) a beginning class in order to teach it. (I am not saying that is what happened in this case.)
kumimonster
Contributor
Question since I'm not an instructor:
Can you still teach a PADI AOW course (or drysuit course) if the company you work for has been dropped by PADI?
I've taken a class from someone before that was a PADI instructor but that wasn't through an official PADI dive operator, just an individual who kept his instructor cert current. Does it make a difference when working for an operator?
pauldw
Contributor
Yeah, there were a number of things in that Complaint that were stretches, or just reflected cluelessness. So hopefully no one swallows it whole. It will be good if someone finds and posts the Answer(s). But it sure appears that the basic outline of the facts rings true, and is horrific.
Glenn Williams
Contributor
How in the world did she have 24 pounds of weight and then they find an additional 20 pounds for a total of 44 pounds of weight?
Wouldn’t she have known she was over weighted?
Wow just wow.
Glenn
Wouldn’t she have known she was over weighted?
Wow just wow.
Glenn
