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

[Esprise Me]

I guess if we assume they all started together, we see the three divers descend to about 60 feet during the first five or so minutes. Then over the next five-ish minutes, Liston ascends all the way to the surface, while Snow hangs for a bit, briefly drops a little to 75, comes up to about 40, drops back to 55, then also ascends directly to the surface. Perhaps she was chasing him? Linnea begins a brief rapid ascent around minute 6 of her dive but then quickly drops back down and is on the bottom by minute 10. So maybe that's the basis for her mom's conclusion, and maybe it's accurate. I guess the subsequent dives could be Liston and Snow going back down to look for her. And since Snow supposedly recovered her body, and the start/end times show them both in the water for 47 minutes start to finish, I guess that makes sense.

However, the first amended complaint said that Bob tried to rescue Linnea until she lost consciousness, then he surfaced to get help, but there was no one on the surface. This part is on page 63; I'm having trouble copying the text on my phone.

ETA: Actually, wait. Rereading the complaint, it talks about Snow doing a first dive with E.G. that lasted only 6 minutes and only went to 15 feet, then bringing her back to shore before doing a second dive. And Linnea was apparently with them for the first dive? Now I'm confused again.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

The sad thing is a young girl's death prompted all these discussions of changes in the industry standards. Why did someone have to die in the first place?

Steve

She’s unfortunately not the first and sadly will most likely not be the last. There have been many senseless training deaths and yet there is still no substantive change to date.

 

[formernuke]

Curious.

If they were my clients I would have told them to not post anything like this. Especially since it raises questions.

 

[BRT]

I'm kind of lukewarm on the Divers Ready YouTube channel in general, but I agree with almost everything in his recent video on this subject:


(I guess he's blocked 3rd party embeds, but clicking the Watch on YouTube link works.)

Should be able to raise the cost of certifications while lowering profits for the dive industry and make it so less people bother to dive.

 

[Alaskan Scuba Dude]

There have been many senseless training deaths and yet there is still no substantive change to date.

The standards are black and white. It's the Instructors who have become complacent, with no real dive experience.

 

[iointerrupt]

There seems to be a thread of hope here, that if PADI is found liable, they would attempt to increase their instructor quality to prevent similar cases in the future.

But we all know that some fair number of SCUBA fatalities are from unknown/unforeseen medical issues. No matter how gold-plated an instructor PADI (or anyone else) produces, they can't prevent a heart attack, and the risk of lawsuits that brings.

So wouldn't that just drive PADI to attempt to distance themselves even further from instructors? Remove anything that even hints at a relationship with the instructors, remove all claims of quality control, simply sell the training material and tell the courts "we're just a textbook publisher".

I just have a hard time seeing agencies getting tasked with assuming more liability, and attempting to fix that through quality control that wouldn't actually fully remove the liability.

 

[Esprise Me]

I do think that's a possible outcome. Sometimes from a liability standpoint, you're better off doing less to try to ensure safety, and making it clear what you're not responsible for.

I don't know that heart attacks and other no-fault fatality causes play into the dynamic, though. The plaintiff still has to prove negligence, which means if the answer to "why did diver X die?" is "heart attack" or even "we don't know," it's hard to see that PADI losing that suit. But cases like this, where there seems to be a very clear link between the instructor's negligence and the student's death, and there's at least a plausible connection between the instructor's negligence and PADI's failure to supervise or ensure quality control, yeah. That could have them rethinking some big-picture stuff.

But I can't imagine that, if the agencies retreated like that, there would simply be no one overseeing scuba instruction. I feel like the government might step in, and I'm not sure anyone wants that.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

There seems to be a thread of hope here, that if PADI is found liable, they would attempt to increase their instructor quality to prevent similar cases in the future.

But we all know that some fair number of SCUBA fatalities are from unknown/unforeseen medical issues. No matter how gold-plated an instructor PADI (or anyone else) produces, they can't prevent a heart attack, and the risk of lawsuits that brings.

So wouldn't that just drive PADI to attempt to distance themselves even further from instructors? Remove anything that even hints at a relationship with the instructors, remove all claims of quality control, simply sell the training material and tell the courts "we're just a textbook publisher".

I just have a hard time seeing agencies getting tasked with assuming more liability, and attempting to fix that through quality control that wouldn't actually fully remove the liability.

Medical issues are a completely separate issue. In such cases, the person is statistically going to die no matter what steps were taken.

The issue in my eyes is the release of poorly trained instructors to teach courses in environments that are completely foreign to where they had their IDC, IE, etc.. The biggest problem I see with agencies in general is that they don't say how. I remember my CD telling us that his job was to get us to pass the IE, not on how to teach. And the folks at HQ thought he was a god. Just pointing to the standards is just misguided, as there are so many training deaths where it appears that no meaningful steps are taken. I don't want to refer to another fatality, but there is another discussion where I believe the instructor was following standards yet a student died as a result.

Some agencies certainly need to change some standards and the content of IDCs.

If agencies decide to become a textbook publisher, then would instructors/pros pay them yearly dues? Whatever for?

 

[Blackcrusader]

del already posted

 

[Wookie]

Some news just released here

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You have a different link, that one doesn’t work for most users