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

[Wookie]

There is no such thing as a certification for teaching at altitude. There is no such thing as certification for teaching with a drysuit.

I agree (at least I think I remember) that if an advanced student wishes to take a drysuit experience or an altitude experience, that any OWSI can teach that.

In fact, you can use a drysuit, nitrox, and at altitude in the OW class. At least as I remember. Standards may have changed in the 20 years since I issued a PADI card.

And it is confusing what class Linnea was taking that day. Or is she was participating in a class at all. I expect a judge will determine that. There will be howling from both sides.

But-would a reasonable person, I suspect you are a reasonable person, think that young Linnea went to Ms Snow to get advanced instruction, was encouraged to buy a drysuit (here, buy a drysuit from this person), and was at the lake with her instructor, with the goal of being instructed?

Would anyone not an instructor think that Linnea wasn’t there for instruction? Debbie isn’t going to be tried on ScubaBoard, but in Missoula. By 12 folks who probably aren’t divers, but even if they aren’t, they may have heard that diving is safe, and that PADI is the way the world learns to dive. And the guy going after Debbie (and PADI) is a slick lawyer who hasn’t lost a scuba case yet.

 

[boulderjohn]

But-would a reasonable person, I suspect you are a reasonable person, think that young Linnea went to Ms Snow to get advanced instruction, was encouraged to buy a drysuit (here, buy a drysuit from this person), and was at the lake with her instructor, with the goal of being instructed?

I have written about this in the thread several times. It is obvious that she was there for instruction, but in what? She was supposedly taking AOW instruction, which requires 5 specific dives. It appears as if she was using the drysuit on the dive because the water was cold, not because she was receiving drysuit instruction. Which instructional dive was she doing? There is no indication that she had done any of the required knowledge reviews for any of the AOW dives. There is no indication that there was any attempt to teach her anything whatsoever in the dive.

The failure of the attorney to include any of this in the charges indicates to me (and I have said this before) that it must be an intentional strategy. If I ( a proud non-attorney) were to guess the reason, it would go to the heart of these most recent posts--to keep PADI and its financial resources in the suit. The failures of the instructor in this dive are astounding, and if it is clear that she was that far removed from the standards for instruction, then, as Jim Wyatt noted a few posts ago, how can the agency be blamed?

Would anyone not an instructor think that Linnea wasn’t there for instruction? Debbie isn’t going to be tried on ScubaBoard, but in Missoula. By 12 folks who probably aren’t divers, but even if they aren’t, they may have heard that diving is safe, and that PADI is the way the world learns to dive. And the guy going after Debbie (and PADI) is a slick lawyer who hasn’t lost a scuba case yet.

Yes, he is a slick lawyer, and you have been rooting for his victory in this aspect of the case from the start. WIll you be thrilled by a precedent that says that anytime an instructor screws up anywhere in the world, the agency that certified that instructor can be automatically sued for millions of dollars? What do you think that would do to scuba agencies around the world?

 

[Darnold9999]

As a long time avid skier, I assure you that if any ski run is open, obstacles are marked off so skiers can avoid them.

Absolutely understand that for most runs (I don't think I have ever seen a natural obstacle marked on a double black diamond run, not that I have been on too many), and in many ways the result in this particular case in the early 80's ensures that ski hills today spend quite a bit of time and energy monitoring conditions, marking said obstacles, padding towers etc. Without having any liability (which is what the local hills wanted to eliminate) the incentive to get this right is significantly reduced. Which is a large part of what my opinion said in WAY more words The balance that is tricky is that you don't want to put all of or even any of the responsibility for the normal risks of skiing onto the ski hill. You just want to make sure that what they do does unduly add to this normal risk. Not simple. Lots of parallels to diving.

 

[Darnold9999]

WIll you be thrilled by a precedent that says that anytime an instructor screws up anywhere in the world, the agency that certified that instructor can be automatically sued for millions of dollars? What do you think that would do to scuba agencies around the world?

I kind of do, particularly if the agency that certified the instructor does not have a way of weeding out the incompetent and dangerous in a reasonably efficient way. If you're going to provide credentials that say someone is competent in some field and they are not, either at the time you gave them instruction or some time after (and you know that and they still have the credentials), then I want the agency telling me that they are competent (because they have a certificate) to be held responsible for that incompetence. Particularly if said agency is shouting from the rooftops that instructors with their certification are the best and profiting from providing that certification and instruction. Protecting them from liability just allows them to shirk what IMHO is their responsibility - ensuring that the instructors they certify are, and remain, competent.

Not to say that the agency should automatically be held responsible, but that if the instructor was incompetent, the agency knew or ought to have known that and did nothing and that incompetence was the cause of the accident then absolutely the agency bears some responsibility.

 

[Wookie]

Yes, he is a slick lawyer, and you have been rooting for his victory in this aspect of the case from the start. WIll you be thrilled by a precedent that says that anytime an instructor screws up anywhere in the world, the agency that certified that instructor can be automatically sued for millions of dollars? What do you think that would do to scuba agencies around the world?

I believe that an agency has a duty to their members to keep standards high.

But I’ve watched employees performing instructor examinations pass candidates who couldn’t perform a hover. I’ve watched every candidate drown their victim during the rescue evaluation. These are things I’ve seen. I’ve had PADI QA tell me to hold a report (that I had submitted, when I had a student at 260 feet during an open water dive) to see if I would be sued or not. These are not anecdotal stories, these are circumstances I’ve witnessed myself or had happen to me that go directly against standards and were performed by an employee of PADI. I will name names in a PM if you are interested.

I also had a very good friend who worked in Training, she was the real deal. I won’t tell her stories, they aren’t mine to tell. She worked there for a number of years.

So while you think I desperately want PADI to fail, that isn’t the truth. I desperately want PADI to uphold the standards they had when I became an instructor. They aren’t that far off, just enough to make me very sad.

I’m reminded of IANTD, I am very friendly with several past and present board members. But they have instructors who take open water divers into the cave zone in (IIRC) Italy? With no censure?

I don’t see SSI, NAUI, or SDI instructors continuing to teach after egregious violations of standards. If I were PADI, I’d want to hang my standards violators from the highest tree and sing the praises of my tough standards.

BTW, I filed a QA regarding the IE I witnessed. I’m still waiting for a response since 1999.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

PADI did layout in the standards how these type dives should be conducted and who can conduct them. The instructor ignored those standards entirely.

Not sure if I misunderstand you, but the "who can conduct them" seems to have the implication that Snow was not certified to teach AOW. Is that correct?

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

I don’t see SSI, NAUI, or SDI instructors continuing to teach after egregious violations of standards. If I were PADI, I’d want to hang my standards violators from the highest tree and sing the praises of my tough standards.

I do. The whole industry has issues with QA.

 

[boulderjohn]

I don’t see SSI, NAUI, or SDI instructors continuing to teach after egregious violations of standards

Absurd.

I started to rattle off cases I knew about from those agencies you mention, but I decided not to open that can of worms. What I will point out is the absolute absurdity of your implication that you know all the QA situations for all the major agencies, what was done with them, and why.

I will point out one situation that will show the problem. My niece was certified by NAUI. She had one 2 hour pool session and one OW dive to 10 feet before certification. (I learned this a couple years later when I learned she was certified and offered to dive with her.) I assume that instructor showed perfectly fine skills when he was certified by NAUI, and I further assume that NAUI has no idea that he has chosen to teach to those standards and so has not considered any QA action. Note that in this complaint, the argument is not that PADI ignored standards violations--the complaint is that they did not know about them but should have put in more effort to find out.

 

[Wookie]

Absurd.

I started to rattle off cases I knew about from those agencies you mention, but I decided not to open that can of worms. What I will point out is the absolute absurdity of your implication that you know all the QA situations for all the major agencies, what was done with them, and why.

I will point out one situation that will show the problem. My niece was certified by NAUI. She had one 2 hour pool session and one OW dive to 10 feet before certification. (I learned this a couple years later when I learned she was certified and offered to dive with her.) I assume that instructor showed perfectly fine skills when he was certified by NAUI, and I further assume that NAUI has no idea that he has chosen to teach to those standards and so has not considered any QA action. Note that in this complaint, the argument is not that PADI ignored standards violations--the complaint is that they did not know about them but should have put in more effort to find out.

Which reinforces the whole notion that the entire training part of scuba is out of control.

I have no issue believing that.

 

[boulderjohn]

If I were PADI, I’d want to hang my standards violators from the highest tree and sing the praises of my tough standards.

Reading your responses over the years is like watching a tennis match, with you at both ends of the court.

Not many years ago, what was until now the worst case of poor instructor actions I had ever heard of led to the death of a Boy Scout in a Utah lake. PADI did an investigation and immediately expelled the instructor for those gross violations of standards.

You may want to check out the thread about this on ScubaBoard and read how you excoriated PADI for "throwing the instructor under the bus." SDI/TDI put out a public letter attacking PADI for blaming the instructor and invited instructors to cross over to SDI, an agency that promised to stand behind their instructors' actions. You trumpeted that line, praising SDI for that promise. Eventually PADI responded with a public letter listing most (but not all) of the egregious standards violations. Even after that, when it came time to renew membership, SDI/TDI sent that same letter to its members, even though so much of it had been shown to be false, promising us (I was a TDI instructor then) they would not abandon us, no matter what. That is why I stopped being a TDI instructor.

BTW, I filed a QA regarding the IE I witnessed. I’m still waiting for a response since 1999.

You will be waiting forever. After receiving a complaint, PADI does its own investigation and acts in accordance with its findings. It will not send those results. It published expulsions and the like, but if the appropriate response is deemed to be something along the lines of remedial education, then that is not published.