Suit filed in case of "Girl dead, boy injured at Glacier National Park
- Thread starter Jim Lapenta
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Subfiend
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Well, technically, all of it is true except for the "four feet below me" part. Linnea was probably six feet below Snow when Snow had the problem clearing her ear, but she turned around and swam right past Linnea less than a minute later. Snow, being clueless and fixated on her compass, never even noticed her student was in distress.
When did she have the required pool session and academic session prior to the open water drysuit dives?
Subfiend
Contributor
- Messages
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Never.
SouthernSharktoothDiver
Contributor
"A student in my class died, and it was the fault of another student in my class, because he dared not do my job in such a heroically competent fashion as to make up for my own obscene degree of reckless negligence."--Debbie Snow
This is all absolutely horrifying. It is true that there are two sides to every story, but many of the claims made in the complaint (her pressure injuries, the lead stuffed in her BCD and drysuit, which was documented by the medical examiner and the dive rescue squad, the lack of emergency response plan or proper authorization to use the dive location) are well beyond what any lawyer would claim falsely, since they're eminently verifiable via the evidence at hand. Making up such facts would be shooting any case in the foot even if the rest of it was true. Thus even if other facts were patently false (like, let's say Bob was in fact her buddy. I do not believe this was the case, but let us imagine it was for a moment), the instructors have still screwed up to a point where, if I'm on the jury, nothing short of video evidence to show Bob pulling out a knife to slash Linnea's BCD convinces me he's more at fault that the instructors.
Ultimately, unless the defense has a smoking gun so good I can't imagine what it would even be, I think they should lose this case. Furthermore I think both of them should rot in jail for the rest of their natural lives. This was beyond horrifying, and frankly I admire the family of the deceased in their restraint on this matter. That they have not physically attacked this woman for her callous comments about the death of their daughter, which she was directly at fault for, shows absolutely saintlike patience.
This is all absolutely horrifying. It is true that there are two sides to every story, but many of the claims made in the complaint (her pressure injuries, the lead stuffed in her BCD and drysuit, which was documented by the medical examiner and the dive rescue squad, the lack of emergency response plan or proper authorization to use the dive location) are well beyond what any lawyer would claim falsely, since they're eminently verifiable via the evidence at hand. Making up such facts would be shooting any case in the foot even if the rest of it was true. Thus even if other facts were patently false (like, let's say Bob was in fact her buddy. I do not believe this was the case, but let us imagine it was for a moment), the instructors have still screwed up to a point where, if I'm on the jury, nothing short of video evidence to show Bob pulling out a knife to slash Linnea's BCD convinces me he's more at fault that the instructors.
Ultimately, unless the defense has a smoking gun so good I can't imagine what it would even be, I think they should lose this case. Furthermore I think both of them should rot in jail for the rest of their natural lives. This was beyond horrifying, and frankly I admire the family of the deceased in their restraint on this matter. That they have not physically attacked this woman for her callous comments about the death of their daughter, which she was directly at fault for, shows absolutely saintlike patience.
Wheeler925
Contributor
Whatever happened with any civil suits?
jellycatsdad
Contributor
They weee settled outside of court, I think. PADI settled as well.
Was there a civil suit against Snow? @Subfiend would have to answer that. There's a saying in my native Holland that you can't pluck feathers from a naked chicken. Not all of us are legal experts, and @Omisson can't chime in as he's in legal trouble yet again, but we seem to be in agreement that there is criminal negligence here at a minimum. The issue of the lack of criminal charges has been discussed in this thread.
I feel quite strongly that there hasn't been any significant change to keep this from happening again. And that scares me.
