Andrea Doria lawsuit dismissed

[cornfed]

WJL once bubbled...


You guys are missing the point.

No, I'm ignoring it on purpose...

 

[WJL]

cornfed once bubbled...


No, I'm ignoring it on purpose...

Ah, but Drew, civic aviation can be conducted in a completely civil manner. In fact, white gloves are de riguer.

 

[Wreck]

... I'm not so willing to excuse the incompetence of some professionals.

Nor am I. However, this diver's "accident" seems minor but deadly. It probably could have happened to any OW diver-in-training with the same level of fitness. To expect that someone else would have challenged the diver's ability and stopped him, is asking for services beyond that waiver form. After all, a doctor's note was provided giving a clean bill of health.

When the diver is stupid in not knowing/diving limits, it's that diver's stupidity which causes the injury.

I'm not sure if the diver in question realized his own diving limits so far as his health was concerned. If this diver expected something like this to happen to him, he probably wouldn't have made the dive. If he was aware of the potential, he took the chance and lost the gamble.

When the professionals, people who make money off of the stupid diver, are also stupid and contribute to a tragedy through their own actions or inactions, they are also responsible.

If you don't understand what a waiver form really is, you'd better wake up to the fact that you are completely responsible to your own self if you choose to take up that activity. This is not a welfarish sport where you can expect other people to be charged with maintaining your own well-being outside of the (usual general and customary) services spelled out under contract. That includes relying on your buddy to bail you out of bad situations. It is therefore irrelevant whether or not your buddy happens to be your instructor. I guess that would make me someone you wouldn't want to dive with right? I believe you should conduct each dive as if you were diving solo, AND be a responsible buddy.

Every properly trained and competent diver from complete beginner to longtime expert is aware that they're supposed to know and dive their limits and that they're responsible for their own safety.

But, the diver is not the only person responsible for safety.

It seemed like you might have contradicted yourself there(?) Either that or you are saying the diver is NOT completely responsible for his own safety, which I disagree with beyond written contractual agreement. No one wants to see divers have accidents, but the line has to be drawn somewhere as far as responsibility, and that's what those waiver forms are for.

Healthwise, which I see as the root cause of this death, the diver *IS* responsible for their own safety. No instructor could be fairly expected to know what a person's health is at a given moment, without obviously overt signs. These guys are not hired as doctors, but instructors.

I'm sure there are individuals that know to dive their limits, exceeded them, and will continue to do so on occasion.

It's an unfair and kneejerk reaction for people to assume that a grieving family filing a lawsuit is just looking for a payout. Sometimes, the family is looking for accountability and justice. There's nothing wrong with that.

I see it as unjust when the defendant(s) of a suit is forced to spend money for attorneys in a case where, in all fairness, they should never have been accused in the first place.

On a tangent, I know an instructor who lost one of his freshly minted OW students to an area that all new OW students should know was beyond their abilities. Even though the vicitim(?) was no longer a student or under their purview, the instructor gave up instructing for a while just to personally deal with it. To say that a lawsuit is needed to express the victim's surviving relatives' feeling of mistrust in the dive skills taught by the instructor is proabably not needed. Granted, many people do not seem to have a conscience, but I don't think I've met an instructor where that doesn't have one.

 

[Nomaster]

Liability forms...contracts.....medical questionnaires..etc...People (in general) just don't take them seriously. I guess that it's in our human nature to think that we are invincible and that the liability for mis "just a formality".
....
If your not ready to take responsibility for yourself or abide by the contracts you sign (in diving and everything else)... to bad! (I obviousely recognize that even if someone does everything right, bad things can happen; and sometimes, others are to blame)....but for the most part....

Legal issues: I believe the court's findings were correct.

Safety issues: The guy was at fault and had the right to risk HIS OWN LIFE.
*****But, He did not have the right to risk the lives of those he dove with.

I am one of the people who don't take the release forms seriously, but reading this in depth analysis for the first 63 or so entries has had me struggling with myself and decisions I must take and make good on.
I am old enough to know better but I've been, mostly, ignoring my health for quite a few years. This thread has convinced me that I cannot ignore the fact that I've let myself become obese. In diving it's the safety of others, not my own selfish lack of concern that matters.
I feel the physical stresses that my obesity causes me both when I dive and when I don't. But the reality of the danger that I can place other divers in just didn't quite sink in (I didn't/{don't?} want them to) until reading this thread.
This discussion and the rest of the story would make good reading for student SCUBA divers and maybe a good review for all of us who don't take our health too seriously.
I would not let myself think how others might be effected. After all, it's not like I'm driving drunk. Right? I think in the case of diving with a buddy, it is exactly as wrong.
Well, I HATE exercise, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give up diving.
God I don't want to do this. Exercise is a four letter word. It's an evil a punishment forced upon those of us who can't/don't get out and play enough to stay fit. But if I'm gonna dive, I gotta do it.
I noticed another diver on the board who posts his triumphs. I think I'll have to join in that practice rather than stay quiet and allow myself to remain lazy through my greatest vice, PROCRASTINATION.
Thanks for letting me spew. I think I almost know how it must feel to get up in front of an AA group now.

**I've finished the thread and what I said above still stands.
I enjoyed the discussion, most of it seemed well thought out and well presented. Seems many entries were missing, especially some obvious ones which were quoted. I don't understand; top secret or something? Since they (the quotes) were handled so well, I have to try to believe that they (the original contributions) were withdrawn by the contributors.

Tom