Home - Scuba News - Jury to decide on PADI’s role in teenager’s death
Diver training agency PADI is to be called before a jury in Montana, USA in connection with the death of teenage scuba diver Linnea Mills in November 2020. A judge has overruled PADI’s denial of responsibility for the actions of the dive centre and instructors involved in the incident.
Divernet carried the story of how Mills met her end in a mountain lake. The incident, partially captured on video by a fellow-trainee, led to a $12 million negligence lawsuit being filed by Mills’ parents and two other divers against Gull Dive of Missoula, its owners David & Jeannine Olson, instructors Debbie Snow and Seth Liston and PADI Worldwide.
The agency was accused of negligence in its oversight of a member-business, and now Missoula County District Judge Leslie Halligan has denied its claim that it should not be included as a defendant.
Mills, 18, had been on the second dive of a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course in Lake MacDonald in Glacier National Park, north of her home city of Missoula, Montana.
An Open Water Diver, she had no previous coldwater-diving experience. She had hired dive-gear and a wetsuit from Gull Dive for the first dive of the course in another mountain lake but had been given no pre-dive briefing, according to the suit. Air temperatures had been sub-zero, and another trainee had lent Mills her wetsuit to help keep her warm.
Gull Dive had advised Mills to buy a drysuit for her second dive a few days later and she had purchased a secondhand custom-made suit that had come without an inflator. She was unaware that she needed one, and the instructors had failed to check her gear before setting out with her for Lake MacDonald.
The course was to be taught by Liston, described as having “hardly more experience” than his student, and newly certified instructor Snow, said to be unqualified to teach diving with a drysuit or at altitude, where reduced buoyancy can be an issue. Lake MacDonald has an elevation of 960m.
At the dive-site they were joined by two other trainees, Bob Gentry and a 14-year-old referred to as EG, both of whom had recently completed their drysuit training.
When the instructors realised that Mills’ air supply could not be connected to her drysuit, she was told to use her BC for buoyancy control. Twenty kilograms of lead was placed in Mills’ drysuit and BC pockets rather than on a releasable weight-belt. It is alleged that no briefings were given.
Entering the water at 5pm in failing light, Snow took Mills and EG to 5m for about five minutes. Snow brought EG back up because he was uncomfortable, failing to notice how much air had already been squeezed out of Mills’ drysuit. She returned and, with Liston, took Mills, Gentry and another student down to 18m.
Gentry’s chest-mounted GoPro footage is said to show Mills standing on a ledge struggling to breathe but too overweighted to ascend. Unable to get her instructor Snow’s attention, she signalled to Gentry for help, but as he swam over she overbalanced and started sinking rapidly.
Gentry caught up with her at 26m. She was showing signs of being crushed by her suit and he spent half a minute trying unsuccessfully to locate and release her weights to halt her descent, after which she lost her second stage. He tried to share his air but, in danger of running out, was forced to leave her at 32m and make a rapid ascent.
There was no surface cover but when Snow eventually surfaced she dived briefly to look for Mills, but failed to find her. On a later second dive, her body was found at 39m and brought up.
The lawsuit alleges that Jeannine Olsen told the coroner that a dive-buddy had witnessed Mills panicking before falling passively to the lakebed, but having shown no sign of difficulties at 12m. It also states that she had told Gentry, who has since become a friend of the Mills family, to say that he had been responsible for the fatality. It further states that the medical examiner had failed to note bruising caused by the drysuit squeeze.
The National Park Service was said to have conducted an investigation because Gull Dive had not been authorised to operate in the park, according to the Missoula Current, which ran the original report on the suit. An earlier legal action into another fatality in 2019 was ongoing against Gull Dive, but because the dive-school had failed to report the incident to PADI, Mills and her family would have been unaware of this.
PADI had submitted a document denying vicarious responsibility for Mills’ death, arguing that Gull Dive and its instructors were neither agents of nor employed by the agency. It argued that he disclaimer form signed by Mills before diving should have made it clear that PADI could not be held responsible should anything go wrong.
But the judge noted that PADI did exert some control over Gull Dive and its instructors by virtue of the phrase in its membership agreements: “Except as otherwise provided in this membership agreement…” and because Gull Dive and the instructors were contractually obliged to follow PADI’s standards and instructions.
Also, an instructor could be an “ostensible” agent of PADI if Mills believed that instructor to represent PADI because of PADI’s claims. The judge felt it would be for the jury to decide to what extent PADI could be held responsible for Mills’ death.
Steve has been a scuba diver for 30 years and became editor of Diver magazine in 1996, following 10 years with BBC World Service and the 10 before that in motoring journalism.
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Interesting case. I wonder how much responsibility the students bear in these cases. Of course the professionals are responsible for most part. But diving in an incomplete dry suite, no releasable weight, at some point the common sence of a student is supposed to kick in, imho.
You can always say that the diver/student is ultimately responsible for their own safety but a student doesn’t know what they don’t know. Until a student has passed certification the instructor is responsible for ensuring the student is safe along with checking and explaining the functionality of all the gear they are wearing. In my mind the instructor and dive shop were completely negligent here. The instructor should have known that the squeeze from the suit with no inflator would render her immobile at depth. I’m not a dry suit diver so I didn’t realize that until I read the initial story and had it explained by someone that is a dry suit diver.
Agree, the instructor was not even certified to teach that specific specialty of drysuit. The instructor should have called this dive numerous times, but she continued, and Liston was not even an instructor nor a dive master, he had just gotten his advanced the day before. For the national park not to press charges on the instructor is ridiculous. Everything an instructor is taught she did it wrong on all accounts. Just sickening
Did I read this right? Whomever manufactured the dry suit did not have a means to hook to a low pressure outlet to adjust for suit squeeze?
No, the student had rented a reg set that didn’t have an inflator hose, and the second hand suit he bought didn’t come with a hose either.
Every modern regulator set has at least one inflator hose (for the BC). If you absolutely had to dive in a dry suit with only one inflator hose, it would be far better to hook it up to the instead of the BC. You can orally inflate a BC but can’t do anything to a without an inflator.
Drysuit inflator connection is not normally the same size as the BC. On my drysuit the BC inflator hose will connect with excessive force, but it will pop off once I turn on the air.
She probably had no idea of effect of suit sqeeze, suspect it didnt have dump valve either as probably not for diving. Instructor should have prevented dive. Also not being able to dump lead should also have stopped. she was a newby so instructor should have taken lead Yet again PADI refusing to accept responsibility ability for a Padi centre
I cannot stress this enough. This by no means was the student fault or something that should have kicked for the student. Majority of the divers dive in warmish water where drysuit is not a think and that was the case of Linnea. furthermore the centre was aware of that and even then decided to sell a surface drysuit and not check with student not giving her directions. There is a reason why dive centre exist. To give guidance and instructions. This one failed to do so.
This is an absolutely tragic story and important for the diving industry to hear about and learn from. However why does Divernet have links to items for sale in such a dreadful story? You are trying to profit from a tragedy and it’s sickening!
Apologies, that should not have happened with this story.
This case is tragic and could have been avoided. Reading the article the instructor and PADI are fully responsible. The key points are: Diving altitude requires instruction non given:.Allowing a student to dive a Dry suit without instruction, just purchased second hand, no inflator to prevent suit squeeze. Over weighting the Diver.: Instructor allowed diver to dive suit without an inflator and telling diver just to use your BC. I can go on and on. This case is a typical PADI contractor teaching out of a PADI dive shop. There are no checks and balances. I have seen this before, where no one wants to take responsibility and points fingers elsewhere. When is this going to end. Probably never! All PADI cares about is the $$ and that they are number 1. I know for a fact that complaints to PADI go unanswered. It would be great for someone to publish accidents / incidents by certifying agency, but we will never see that.
PADI Stands for put anothr dollar in. They are responsible.
Deeply negligent on the shop and instructor part. PADI instructor 20+ years now and have watched ‘standards’ get Disney-fied. Spend much of my time helping ‘certified’ divers learn to dive on our trips. 😒
Dry suit diving is a skill not easily learned. First time use, in my opinion, should be conducted in a controlled environment such as a pool. A dry suit requires the ability to let air in and out for safe use. It sounds like she had no way to put air into the dry suit which at depth kinda defeats its purpose. Cold water in and of itself is a pretty big stressor. Weighting is different. Your center of gravity changes. Don’t have all the evidence but if it had been me I wouldn’t have allowed my student to dive, given what we’ve been told up to this point. I’m a MSDT, an ex dive team member, and dry suit specialty instructor.
Many places are like that in USA, make you sign some documents and say you already have a course from PADI, and just throw you in the water. They don’t care about people lives and they only care about charging you double for someone to dive with you , i once paid for that and they just gave me an un experience guy to take care of him instead on a boat trip. He had only three dives and they gave him a tank and told him jump. He finished his tank in 15 min. I took him back to the boat and promised never dive again in usa for all the stupid dive centers that doesn’t take care of their clients.
As a driver, I cannot believe many things about this tragedy. To put a new diver in a dry suit without any training is negligence right there. To allow the diver to use the dry suit without a proper inflator hose is gross negligence. That suit starts squeezing you after 10′!!
To add insult to injury weighting her down without any means of quick release is another gross negligence.
The entire situation, including putting a new diver in a cold water environment that she has never dived, along with incomplete/non-functioning equipment, and basically in a pair of ‘cement shoes,’ was a perfect storm of gross negligence.
While PADI may not be directly responsible, they do have a responsibility for the instructors that act as their agents.
This fatality unfortunately is no surprise.What else to expect from “PAID”??? Advanced Diver without any experience… instructors who kneel on the ground and goes on.
Not a recreational diver, but I have been a commercial diver since 75 and I have taught commercial divers. I see a lot that was done wrong here. It will be interesting to see if PADI is held liable and to what extent.
Any instructor tat allows a dive trainee to dive with a dry suit with no means of inflation has a fundamental misunderstanding of the need to be able to inflate the suit. Complete incompetence
The student was already an Open Water.. she should have know what to do, quick release belt and Dry suit training should be learn in a swimming pool first.. So she would have know that she need a inflator valve for her suit.. Student mistake all the way
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