The Dive Blog (Mar. 30) discusses a suit filed in Orange County, California in which Brenda Palmer-Shatz of Laguna Niguel blames the actions of Steve Feldman “whether negligent or intentional” for the drowning of her husband Daryll Shatz on Nov. 30, 2003. Feldman had been acting as Shatz’s “diving buddy” in the common practice by which scuba divers help watch out for each other’s safety. Mrs. Palmer-Shatz’s allegations of intentional misconduct, which are of the most incendiary and scandalous nature, are enough to make the suit highly unusual; but her separate allegations of negligence raise some issues of broad importance to the future of scuba diving as a sport, as DiveBlog notes:
I would hate for the perceived potential for liability to cause someone to abandon the buddy system altogether. To my knowledge, there have been very few (if any) instances where a negligence suit has succeeded against a dive buddy.
Reporter Peggy Lowe’s coverage of the story in the Orange County Register is reprinted at Underwater Times and Cyber Diver News Network.
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