Student Suing Dropzone A Few Years Back

[wildfan75 1]

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Sometimes I wonder if human evolution has become de-evolution.

Yep...except it has nothing to do with science. I won't go any further so this thread doesn't end up in the speaker's corner.

[CSpenceFLY 1]

I wonder if Lutz walks around thinking he is the man because of all of the attention he got or does he really know he is a dumb ass that is lucky to be alive in spite of himself. I would say he was lucky to get far enough in life to make that skydive.

[OnYourBack 0]

Pacer is only for federal court. Looks like this was filed in state court. Missouri uses a site called casenet for its state court info.

http://www.courts.mo.gov/casenet/base/welcome.do

His suit was filed back in the beginning of 2004 and looks like it never went anywhere.

[Unstable 8]

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"You're so excited," Robin Bloebaum said. "You're getting pictures and they say 'Sign the form.' You don't think about insurance."

God I'm starting to hate reading things like this Scumbag attorneys are going to do this sport in faster than anything the FAA could ever do. I wonder how many Riggers ever get pulled up there on the stand to be held accountable for shit like this. What, just because this bonehead didn't realize that this isn't a roller-coaster ride, he should get his leg paid for?

=========Shaun ==========

[Andy9o8 0]

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I wish I was a lawyer - Then I could get a better Rig, Car, House, and girlfriend!

this line of thinking is your first mistake.

Actually, the part about the girlfriend is spot on.

[NickDG 23]

Somewhat in Lutz's defense I was behind him in the airplane with another level one AFF student as he exited with his Instructors, Rocky and Moley. I didn’t teach the FJC that day, but I saw his class training throughout the day and I did talk to Lutz when I came across him practicing on a class break. He seemed like any other student, and from that you should know I really mean any student is a potential Lutz.

Some of you are judging him through your "experienced" jumper mind set, when you'd do better to see him through an Instructor's eyes. Lutz was presented with an extraordinary problem in freefall. So when he says, "Nobody told me what to do when the parachute disappears," it's not as dumb as it sounds. Lutz wasn't trained for exactly what happened to him because nobody was. If we taught for every million to one thing that can happen the FJC would last a week and the student wouldn't be able to remember it all.

I'm sure if Lutz would have had a "normal" malfunction he'd have handled it like hundreds of other students have. But what happened to him was too out of sequence, too unlike what he was taught and drilled in. So even though he comes across as very un-sympathetic in his later TV interviews you have to ask yourself, as a first jump student, how would you have done? It's easy to say now he should have simply followed the procedures for a total malfunction but the way the student gear was set up and amount of things that went wrong put Lutz into a corner. From my point of view this jump was a sterling success as it actually came very close to being a fatality.

For those unfamiliar with the circumstances here's the back story. At Perris the gear had the normal, for those days, hard hip mounted plastic main ripcord which like all student rigs was fairly close to the cutaway handle. The rig was also equipped with a FXC AAD but it was mounted to the main container and not the reserve, and set to fire at 4500-feet. The reasons for this AAD arrangement is a large subject of pros and cons in itself so ignore it for now. There was also an RSL which was attached to a main riser via a snap shackle of the type you see on experienced jumper's rigs.

The exit and freefall were normal until 5000-feet when Lutz reached for his main ripcord handle but placed his hand on the cutaway handle instead. This is a common mistake that AFF Instructors are always ready for it. It's also one of the best arguments for going to the BOC main handle, and better than the one about having to retrain people later on.

Moley, who was on the mainside, grabbed Lutz's hand and tried to prevent the cutaway pull, and he did, but Lutz managed to dislodge the handle from the Velcro. Standard procedure says you can’t leave a student in that position because while he's later steering the main there's too big a chance he might accidentally further pull the handle while pulling down on a toggle, or flaring, at low altitude.

So Moley then pulled the cutaway handle completely from the housing and immediately pulled Lutz's main handle, all the right things to do in this situation. Meanwhile on the other side the second thing was going wrong. Rocky, who was the reserve side saw Lutz reach in to pull, but instead of riding through on the main opening he turned away to leave a bit too early. Rocky's an excellent Instructor with thousands of AFF jumps and oh well, we are all human, and we all screw up sometimes.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Moley had also released his grips on Lutz like he was supposed to do and this is when the third thing went wrong.

As the main deployed and detached, because the cutaway handle was already pulled, the RSL extended but instead of pulling the pins on the reserve container at some point as the three rings released the snap shackle came open and the RSL did nothing. So now we have Lutz alone in freefall with no main and no AAD. And even though Lutz was unable to articulate it later, I'm pretty sure he was running through what he learned earlier in the day and searching for the answer. But realistically, not only was the answer eluding him, so was the question.

With Rocky tracking away it was only the fact Moley just backed away, because he knew full well things weren't going right that saved Lutz from being a fatality. He managed to fly down into Lutz's sightline and made pulling motions on his own reserve handle. And this was the only thing that gave Lutz the answer he was searching for.

As for the reserve ride and his not steering away from the power lines that's easy to understand too. Lutz knew something big went wrong and he probably figured he had something to do with that. But now he had a parachute over his head and I'm pretty sure he thought, "I'm not touching anything else that might screw this up." We've seen that behavior before with military pilots who had ejected and were then supposed to whip out a knife and cut through the four rear suspensions lines that would make their rounds somewhat steerable. But in their debriefs one after another said, "After all that trauma of the initial problem and the ejection I wasn't about to pull out a freaking knife and start cutting any lines that were holding me up."

After the big white flash of Lutz hitting the power lines I ran into the office and pulled his "rap" sheet. This was the waiver he signed and written test (the one that I wrote) he'd taken at the end of his class. That was all in order and he hadn’t missed any questions on the test. It was then I heard Bad Spot Bill's voice on the radio, "He's a bit singed but he's alive and all right."

What we learned from all this was the obvious but Perris changed some things including going to connector links instead of snap shackles for the RSL and moving the ADD back to the reserve. This was something I'd be arguing for and I'm glad they came to their senses. While there were a few good arguments for having it on the main, the bottom line, I thought, was it saved the DZ some bucks on reserve repacks. Another thing is some of Instructors started doing a drill I always did with every student. I had a main plastic ripcord handle, a soft cutaway handle, a metal reserve ripcord handle, and a main lift-web with a large harness ring on it. The drill was to close your eyes and tell me what you have in your hand?

So let's temper our judgment of Lutz, and let him be an example, not of this one individual's inability to later say the right things on TV, but to all future Instructors who think being one is a big piece of cake. And to the rest of us, because we all made a "first" jump – the take away being - there by the grace of luck, it didn't happened to us . . .

NickD BASE 194

[tombuch 0]

Damn, that was a good post, and lots of lessons for us all to learn. Thanks.

Tom Buchanan
Instructor Emeritus
Comm Pilot MSEL,G
Author: JUMP! Skydiving Made Fun and Easy

[wildfan75 1]

NickDG, very well written.

But (yes, I know, there's always a "but"), in the interviews that I have seen, Lutz doesn't say "Oh, I messed up. I pulled the wrong handle." He says something to the effect of and implies "I pulled my ripcord and my main malfunctioned." He makes it sound as though he did absolutely nothing wrong. Same with his landing into power lines. He could have said that with all the crap that went wrong, I didn't want to take the chances that something might go wrong with the reserve. He made it sound as though he had absolutely no control over the situation and it was the gear's fault.

I honestly think that people would have a much better opinion of Lutz and maybe even a positive one if he would have ponied up for his mistakes. If we would have said, "I f'ed up. This is why its important to not only listen to your instructors, but hear what they are saying, understand what they are saying and be comfortable with being what is asked. I had it down pat in my head so I can only imagine what would have or could have happened had I not had it down pat before the jump". But he didn't. He came off looking like a victim to a vast majority of people, and an idiot in the skydiving community.

Of course, I take back every word I just wrote if the raw footage of his interviews would show that he ponied up and the angle of the reporting was twisted by the media, which is very well possible.

[NickDG 23]

>>I take back every word I just wrote if the raw footage of his interviews would show that he ponied up and the angle of the reporting was twisted by the media, which is very well possible.
I'm sure he didn't "pony" up. The point I'm trying to make is we are being too hard on "Lutz" who had one jump, and not hard enough on ourselves who have thousands of jumps . . .

NickD BASE 194

[PWScottIV 0]

I guess my reason for being so annoyed about Lutz's performance doesn't have nearly as much to do with what he did in the sky as much as what he said on the ground. He took absolutely NO responsibility for what happened. Nor did he commend the instructor for being instrumental in saving his life after he screwed up. All he did was lay the blame on the DZ and the instructors... It's a trait that I absolutely despise in people. If you f-up, then take responsibility for it... Don't go around pointing the finger at everyone else, cause people in the know are gonna see right through it.

Not too long ago I had a situation at my DZ where some idiot blamed me for their f-up... There's very few times in my life that I've been so ready to completely explode.

Gravity Waits for No One.

[bozo 0]

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I guess my reason for being so annoyed about Lutz's performance doesn't have nearly as much to do with what he did in the sky as much as what he said on the ground. He took absolutely NO responsibility for what happened. Nor did he commend the instructor for being instrumental in saving his life after he screwed up. All he did was lay the blame on the DZ and the instructors... It's a trait that I absolutely despise in people. If you f-up, then take responsibility for it... Don't go around pointing the finger at everyone else, cause people in the know are gonna see right through it.
.

I trained a woman once upon a time.....five staticlines . She did her freefall progression well and we released on her own. 2 years later she had a malfunctioned main...didnt cut away and dumped the reserve into it. She broke literally everything when she hit. A bit later she sued our DZ and every name she could remember for bad training.
The court upheld the waiver.

bozo
Pain is fleeting. Glory lasts forever. Chicks dig scars.

[PWScottIV 0]

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I trained a woman once upon a time.....five staticlines . She did her freefall progression well and we released on her own. 2 years later she had a malfunctioned main...didnt cut away and dumped the reserve into it. She broke literally everything when she hit. A bit later she sued our DZ and every name she could remember for bad training.
The court upheld the waiver.

Some people are absolutely amazing... What effing fantasy world are they living in?! That's like someone suing the DMV because they got into a car accident... Morons. Sounds like the judicial system actually worked though. Too bad we can't just take them all and throw them off a cliff... Except I'm sure there's a few people who would vote to have me thrown off as well, so maybe that ain't such a good idea, lol.

Gravity Waits for No One.

[stratostar 5]

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Except I'm sure there's a few people who would vote to have me thrown off as well, so maybe that ain't such a good idea, lol.

Yea and then they would sue you if you live or your estate if you die, for the emotional trama and mental anguish of having to throw you off the cliff even if you have a signed waver, ain't America great!

you can't pay for kids schoolin' with love of skydiving! ~ Airtwardo

[gemini 0]

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Sounds like the judicial system actually worked though.

Well, yes because the defendent was not liable. BUT what about the defendent's attorney's fees and defendents lost job time to get the issue resolved.

I really think the courts ought to automatically award at least attorney's fees to a defendent when he is dismissed from the case or found not liable during the trial,

I'm still peeved about getting sued in the 80's because of my employer's actions and then being told by the plantiff attorney 3 years later when I was dismissed and out $13K that I was only included so I would keep the financial records for the plantiff.

Blue skies,

Jim

[PWScottIV 0]

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Well, yes because the defendent was not liable. BUT what about the defendent's attorney's fees and defendents lost job time to get the issue resolved.

I really think the courts ought to automatically award at least attorney's fees to a defendent when he is dismissed from the case or found not liable during the trial,

I'm still peeved about getting sued in the 80's because of my employer's actions and then being told by the plantiff attorney 3 years later when I was dismissed and out $13K that I was only included so I would keep the financial records for the plantiff.

That's definitely a difficult situation with respect to making everyone happy. The problem is that how can you assign blame for legal fees when nobody has been able to assign blame? It can definitely go both ways... The judicial system will never be completely efficient or fair. Once legal precedings start, people have already effed up and brought their BS into a court, the damage has already been done... Someone has received some sort of damage and lawyers have received a lot of cash.
I think they do award a reimbursement to people who've obviously been screwed by the system with their frivolous lawsuits.

Gravity Waits for No One.

[lippy 771]

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pssst...there is no Skydive Wabana either on the rock or in labrador....it was a joke..me being silly ...I am a Newfie....born and raised ....just try and out drink me

tanks b'ye

Thank God! For a second there I though somebody'd given the Newfies a DZ! That was the scariest shit I'd seen in a long time!

I got nuthin

[bozo 0]

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[.quote]Sounds like the judicial system actually worked though.[./quote]

Well, yes because the defendent was not liable. BUT what about the defendent's attorney's fees and defendents lost job time to get the issue resolved.

Our DZO at the time told me it cost him around 25k to defend this suit. Utimately it cost him the DZ because he said he wasnt going to go thru that again and sold out for pennies on the dollar.

bozo
Pain is fleeting. Glory lasts forever. Chicks dig scars.

[Unstable 8]

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I trained a woman once upon a time.....five staticlines . She did her freefall progression well and we released on her own. 2 years later she had a malfunctioned main...didnt cut away and dumped the reserve into it. She broke literally everything when she hit. A bit later she sued our DZ and every name she could remember for bad training.
The court upheld the waiver.

I can't even begin to imagine what on earth this woman was thinking.

=========Shaun ==========

[gemini 0]

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***Sounds like the judicial system actually worked though.

Well, yes because the defendent was not liable. BUT what about the defendent's attorney's fees and defendents lost job time to get the issue resolved.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Our DZO at the time told me it cost him around 25k to defend this suit. Utimately it cost him the DZ because he said he wasnt going to go thru that again and sold out for pennies on the dollar.

That's exactly my point! He got sued and was found not liable, lost everything and the plantiff walks away with "loss". Some justice.

And if he couldn't come up with the $25k to defend himself and his company he may have even been found liable.

If you sue someone you should be liable for their damages if they are found not liable. Currently I guess you could then sue them for the damages, but now you're out even more.

Blue skies,

Jim

[BoilingMidnight 0]

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If you sue someone you should be liable for their damages if they are found not liable. Currently I guess you could then sue them for the damages, but now you're out even more.

Agree 100%. Tort reform is one of the few — the very few — things Europe does better than the States. It'd make frivolous plaintiffs think thrice before suing over spilled coffee and drive ambulance chasers right into bankruptcy. But with a majority of politicians holding law degrees, it's an uphill battle against the Trial Lawyers lobby.

P.S. I read a survey stating that of all occupations, lawyering garners the lowest trust amongst others. Interestingly pharmacists ranked first.

"Iþ ik qiþa izwis, ni andstandan allis þamma unseljin."

[J.Mark 0]

I own Archway so let me answer the original post. There was no negligence, the judge upheld the waiver. The lawyer I believe went looking for this individual not the other way around, and even though the training was excellent, we did everything right and there was nothing wrong with the gear it cost me a lot of money to defend.

[aaron111533 0]

Thanks for that J.Mark. It's taking all I have not to call or email this guy and say something like "Hey Paul, I'm a fellow co-worker working for so and so and I was thinking about trying out skydiving but I heard you had an incident where both of your parachutes failed! What happened???"

Luckily though the girl who was actually thinking about doing a tandem at work, then heard about this guy and asked me about it decided to go through with it anyway and did a tandem last Saturday, loved it, and is now thinking about going through AFF.

Of course, everyone else at work around this guy still apparently thinks that "Both parachutes randomly fail quite often for no apparent reason" and think that he did everything right because of his story.

[Jeff.Donohue 0]

If you've got a well drafted waiver, it should include a provision that not only waives the dropzone's liability for skydiving activities, but provides for indemnification of the dropzone in case it incurs costs associated with defending a suit over something for which liability was waived. In other words, the provision -- if enforced -- will require that if the participant brings suit, and the dropzone incurs costs, in addition to not recovering anything (because liability was waived), the participant will have to pay the costs that the dropzone incurs to deal with the suit.

Whether the indemnification provision will be enforced will vary from state to state and how the contract is worded (many states require it to be conspicuous, unambiguous, etc.). If you run a DZ, it's actually one of those things that it's worth talking to whoever your lawyer is to make sure that the liability waiver/indemnification is as broad as it can be. Most of us hate signing long forms like that, but also from the standpoint of being affiliated somehow with a dropzone (being an employee, coach, etc.), it's actually a good thing if the waiver is clear, comprehensive, and as broad as possible.

My dropzone is co-owned by a lawyer, and she generated a pretty comprehensive waiver/indemnification. In addition to that, they have a video that walks participants through each section of the waiver document. ("Section 1 says blah blah blah... This means blah blah blah.") The idea is that no one can claim that they didn't understand it.

/lawyer
//does not like plaintiff lawyers
///particularly does not like plaintiff lawyers who sue dropzones

[brokenwing 1]

skyjumps?????????????

with a parachute????? for real?????

guess i have been away too long

[Unstable 8]

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The idea is that no one can claim that they didn't understand it.

See, I just don't understand how this holds grounds in a court of law. "Excuse me Your honor, I didn't understand and didn't read what I signed so I want my broken leg fixed..."

I know the US of A is behind the curve on Tort Reform, but If I may ask, what kept the aforementioned Dropzone from Counter-Suing for their costs in defending such a frivolous lawsuit?

BTW, my Brother was once engaged to the Daughter of arguably the most successful Ambulance chaser west of the Rockies - the man had more money than he knew what to do with - anybody who gives their college girl a $12,000 a Month living stipend for living has more money than he knows what to do with. I think the man is scum.

=========Shaun ==========