Parents sue Boy Scouts for 2011 negligence death

[Jax]

The Tuvell Case settled today. Damn.

Which way did it go?

 

[decompression]

And?


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[ktomlinson]

I assume the damn means it went against the defendant. But that's an assumption. If you know the resolution, why not post it?


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[boulderjohn]

If it settled, I suspect the details were not made public.

 

[ktomlinson]

Oh settled. Sorry I had brain lapse and forgot what settled meant.


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[Wookie]

Settled. I know none of the details, except council was not able to test ratios as dictated by the training agency. Hays in Virginia (whatever case that was) also settled. Both cases revolved around the allowable student/instructor ratios. There are 2 other cases (one in Hawaii, one in California) that challenge the ratios.

 

[The Chairman]

Yeah, how could they use this to test a standard that was clearly broken? Without a pool session he could only do one at a time and yet he had three. The conditions clearly didn't merit three either even if they had a pool session. I'm not even getting into the health and overweighting issues here. Unfortunately, I see this being played out as evil mean PADI abandoning this instructor in his time of need all over again. I doubt we'll ever learn the nature or scope of the settlement. I'll try to find out at DEMA and post it here if I find out.

 

[Cert1967]

Confidential Settlement

If it settled, I suspect the details were not made public.

Without surprise the case ended with a confidential settlement.

View attachment Settlement CR 12-cv-00128-DB-DBP DOC 282 Filed 10:06:15.pdfView attachment Settlement CR 12-cv-00128-DB-DBP DOC 282 Filed 10:06:15.pdf​

"At the conference, the parties reached a settlement. Immediately thereafter, the courtmemorialized the terms of the settlement at a sealed hearing. The court ordered the parties toformalize the settlement agreement and file the necessary documents within (45) forty-five daysof the date of this order.
DATED this 6th day of October, 2015. PAUL M. WARNER, United States Magistrate Judge"




If you are curious as to federal civil cases ending in settlement - the link below is to the statistical tables for the federal judiciary.

http://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/analysis-reports/statistical-tables-federal-judiciary​

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A segment of plaintiff's attorneys dislike confidential settlements - below is a link to an opinion representative of this thinking. Its germane to this discussion as it seems many readers of this thread were looking for a definitive ruling on training standards, agency relationships with their instructors, and medical statement responsibility. Where and if dollars flowed to/from would be interesting to see in this context.

http://www.americanbar.org/publications/gp_solo/2012/november_december2012privacyandconfidentiality/confidentiality_settlement_agreements_is_bad_clients_lawyers_justice.html​

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Once settled the judge entered the

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[Jim Lapenta]

I would suspect there was a push to settle and the plaintiffs were fine with it in the Tuvell case. Given that testimony revealed medical facts that were hidden and a doctor did not sign off on the clearance.
It was signed by a medical person just not a physician. The mother also had some training as a respiratory therapist.

There is no doubt in my mind the instructor screwed up. I have some of the depositions and expert witness testimony files. The Tuvell case was a cluster from every angle. None of them should have been in open water.

But they were allowed to be there by standards and with those numbers. The instructor was supposed to use good judgment, yes. However no one evaluates "good judgment" in an instructor course. If they do it is highly subjective and prone to be wrong as you are only judging them the day of the exam at that moment.

Down the road you have experience come into play. Along with that can also come ego, pressure to get things done, the normalization of deviance, and just simply having a bad day. The standards don't account for that.

If you had standards that said clearly DSD's are done in confined water only (in a pool or pool like conditions), less than 15 ft deep, with participants limited to 2 adults per instructor or 1 minor ( I define minor as under 18 since they cannot sign for themselves) per instructor there would not have been the opportunity for this to happen. In order for that to happen however, you have to be willing to take more time and possibly make less money. Fancy that, safety ahead of profits. What a novel concept.

But then I guess you can't have eggs without cracking some shells. So even though reduced ratios could have possibly prevented this and some other deaths and injuries, it seems like there is an acceptable number of deaths some are willing to live with. As long as that seems to be the case there will be more. Until the settlements get too expensive and the bad PR from them is worse than the PR from going to trial and having things put in public.

 

[Ayisha]

Here's what David Concannon posted a few days ago. Perhaps he'll come back to this thread and elaborate:

In the past few weeks, two lawsuits involving the definition of PADI's "direct supervision" standard and questioning whether student to instructor ratios are too high have been settled by the instructors and dive shops. Consequently, jury verdicts testing the safety of the PADI standards have been avoided.
Interestingly, in both cases, PADI cooperated with the plaintiffs' attorneys in their efforts to hold the instructors liable and in one case, Tuvell in Utah, PADI was sanctioned by the court for "colluding" with the plaintiffs' attorneys. The PADI standards were harshly criticized by the court and, in the second case, by the jury after it was dismissed. PADI was given an opportunity to change its standards as part of the settlement in the Utah case, but it refused.
PADI is reportedly facing more litigation over these issues in California and Hawaii. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Will the dive industry re-examine its standards in the name of safety or will it be forced to change by future accidents and litigation? One thing is certain: the sharks are circling.