I can say with great confidence that trial lawyers and the courts will answer the title’s question as "absolutely safe". All one has to do is look at some of the cases and judgements awarded. There have been huge awards given where the injured party could pay for all the care needed from the interest on the amount awarded without touching the principle. That is excessive by any standard. That includes the contingency fee from the trial lawyer. A lawyer is present to insure the rights of the injured party are protected. What right does the lawyer have to get a percentage of that award, which usually ends up being huge? It’s called the right to be greedy and it affects the cost everything. Caps on pain and suffering might help solve the problem but nothing has addressed that issue thus far.

I agree that there are legitimate cases where a product or service might cause some serious injury but there are many more cases where stupidity is the cause of some of these judgements. Stupidity seems to be synonymous with ignorance but there is a big difference. A man picks up his running lawnmower to trim his hedges and loses his fingers. This is stupidity but a judgement was awarded against the product manufacturer because there was no warning label on the machine. The product is a lawnmower not a hedge trimmer. In an effort to rob a store, the robber falls through a skylight and is seriously injured. Again stupidity! Why was he on the roof in the first place? He didn’t belong up there, however he is given a huge award by suing the owner and builder of the store he was going to rob.

I mention the above situations, because this seems to be the legal mentality we face when watching diving boards disappear. The individual is never at fault when it comes to serious injury. What must change is the behavior of the individual and the mentality of trial lawyers. Trial lawyers and the courts should expect reasonable safety because absolute safety is not possible on this planet. In most cases especially the ones above, the injured party was not held responsible for anything. People will do stupid things. Some get away without getting hurt and some don’t. That’s life! Why should everyone suffer from the stupidity of others?

Diving and divers are already disappearing because of the fear of lawsuits and not because diving is unsafe. The original safety issue for diving was the pool depth at the point where divers were being injured. Pool depths have changed and injuries from impacting the pool bottom have dropped to virtually nothing except in shallow water. Somehow that fact has been ignored during the legal process. The pool where I run a high school program has just followed up on legal advice and locked the fulcrums all the way forward. The depth of that pool is 12 feet and it is forty feet square. The diving area conforms to the current National Governing Board’s standard for facilities but can not be used as designed because of this fear of lawsuits.

My concern with locked fulcrums is twofold. How can kids get exposure to the sport when the fulcrums are locked at the board’s stiffest point? Recreational swims were the times most kids had exposure to the joy of diving. Now all they can do is jump or dive forward from the board. No somersaults and forget about standing on the end of the board backward. The second concern deals with divers who are used to moving the fulcrums backward. This seems more dangerous for them because they are not experienced with a stiffer board and its action while attempting dives they once did.

Someone will read this article and try to get rid of boards based on the above paragraph. No one will emphasize the earlier statement that injuries from impacting the pool bottom have dropped to nothing, except in shallow water. This has been the case since I began looking at the safety of the sport back in 1977. Diving always seems to get mixed with shallow water incidents. If that continues all boards will be taken out and the Sport will disappear. Statistical evidence doesn’t seem to matter. Potential for injury and the fear of lawsuits will determine the future of the sport of diving. The activity is truly safe and no one even notices.

It’s hard to believe that we may lose an activity for fear of lawsuits and not because it’s unsafe, unaffordable, lacks participants and/or interested fans of the sport.

Trial lawyers have ignored facts and used the intangible to justify their position in a case while causing the demise of an activity. If we lose the sport it is the fault of the courts, lawyers and the diving community because not enough of us are doing anything to rectify the misinformation that leads to this predicament.

Back To Current Topics