Manchanda v. Hays Worldwide, LLC

• Decision Date: 08 October 2015
• Docket Number: No. 1:14cv1339 (JCC/TCB).,1:14cv1339 (JCC/TCB).
• Citation: 142 F.Supp.3d 465
• Parties: Mona MANCHANDA, Plaintiff, v. HAYS WORLDWIDE, LLC, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia

142 F.Supp.3d 465

Mona MANCHANDA, Plaintiff,

v.HAYS WORLDWIDE, LLC, et al., Defendants.

No. 1:14cv1339 (JCC/TCB).

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

Signed Oct. 8, 2015.

Edward Lefebvre Allen, Paul McCourt Curley, Allen Allen Allen & Allen, Fredericksburg, VA, for Plaintiff.

Daniel Paul Poretz, King Campbell & Poretz PLLC, Alexandria, VA, for Defendant.

ORDER

JAMES C. CACHERIS, District Judge.

For the reasons stated in the accompanying Memorandum Opinion, it is hereby ORDERED that:

(1) Defendant Hays Worldwide, LLC and David Hays' Motion for Summary Judgment [Dkt. 43] is DENIED;

(2) All parties shall submit to the court proposed redactions to Liability Release and Assumption of Risk Agreements (Pl.'s Mem. [Dkt. 44] ¶ 4) by WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2015;

(3) The Clerk of the Court shall forward copies of this Order and the accompanying Memorandum Opinion to all counsel of record.

It is SO ORDERED.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

This matter came before the Court on Defendants Hays Worldwide, LLC and David Hays' (collectively "Defendants") motion for summary judgment. [Dkt. 43.] Plaintiff Mona Manchanda filed this wrongful death action as personal representative of the estate of Eena Singh Karras ("Karras"). Plaintiff alleges that Defendants' negligence caused Karras to drown during an instructional scuba dive that Defendants supervised. For the reasons set forth below, the Court will deny Defendants' motion.

I. Background

The following facts are taken from the parties' Local Rule 56(B) statements and are undisputed¹ unless otherwise indicated. (See Defs.' Stmt. of Facts ("SOF") [Dkt. 44] at 3–15; [Dkt. 45] at 16.).

In 2012, Defendant David Hays, together with his wife Janet, owned and operated Splash Dive Center.² (SOF ¶ 1.) Through this dive shop, Hays had certified over 400 scuba divers under the Professional Association of Diving Instructors ("PADI") Open Water Diver curriculum. (See Pl.'s Hays Dep. [Dkt. 48–7] at 128.) This curriculum requires students to complete classroom "knowledge development" sessions, "confined water dives" in a pool, and four "open water dives." (SOF ¶¶ 3, 12–13.).

Anticipating an anniversary trip to the Caribbean, Eena Karras and her husband Thomas registered for a PADI Open Water Diver course at Splash Dive Center in March 2012. (SOF ¶ 15.) Within a month, Karras and Thomas completed the classroom sessions and confined-water dives, leaving only four open-water dives left before their PADI certification. (SOF ¶¶ 12–13.) They set aside a weekend in May 2012 to complete these four dives at Lake Rawlings, Virginia. (SOF ¶ 15.).

Lake Rawlings is actually a quarry that has been converted into a popular dive site. (Id. ) The underwater landscape has many features for dive training, like submerged platforms for practicing buoyancy control, and items for divers to tour, like sunken boats, cars, and even a plane. (Dive Map [Dkt. 46–11].) The conditions at Lake Rawlings on that May weekend "were optimum or near optimum" for diving and there was "excellent light in the water in order for divers to see." (SOF ¶ 20; Defs.' Hays Dep. [Dkt. 46–6] at 149–50.).

Defendant Hays met Karras, Thomas, and four other students at the lake on Saturday morning, May 26, 2012, to instruct the first open-water dive. (SOF ¶ 18.) Hays began, in accordance with PADI standards, by pairing the six students into three buddy teams and briefing them on the dive. (SOF ¶ 21.) The briefing included an equipment check, a buddy safety check, a description of the skills to be performed on the dive, and a buoyancy check. (SOF ¶¶ 21–23; Defs.' Hays Dep. [Dkt. 46–6] at 47–48.) The students completed the Saturday dives according to plan. (Defs.' Hays Dep. at 51.) The only notable incident on Saturday occurred at the end of the afternoon dive when Karras experienced some panic, forcing her to surface. (Pl.'s Mem. in Opp'n ¶ 4.) Karras' husband followed her and learned that she "got scared and a little confused." (Pl.'s Thomas Dep. [Dkt. 48–1] at 75.) Hays joined the two at the surface and told Karras she could either rejoin the group or swim to shore early. (Id. ) According to Thomas, Karras elected to swim to shore early. (Pl.'s Mem. in Opp'n ¶ 5.) Hays, however, recalls that Karras rejoined the group and completed the dive. (Defs.' Hays Dep. at 52–54.). Regardless of this discrepancy, the Saturday-afternoon dive ended without any other problems.

The focus of this case concerns the third dive, which began before noon on Sunday, May 27, 2012. (SOF ¶ 25.) Before the dive, Hays led the students through the same safety checks and briefings as on the prior day, including checking "buoyancy, the air supply, the regulators, the weight configuration, weight releases and then a final locating themselves in their buddy teams." (SOF ¶¶ 29, 31; Defs.' Hays Dep. at 70.) The dive plan required students to tour a sunken boat at a depth of 35–40 feet. (SOF ¶ 29.) Karras expressed some concern to Hays about the depth, asking if it was necessary for her to dive to 40 feet. (Defs.' Hays Dep. at 68–69.) Hays explained that the course required diving to this depth, but that she could elect not to dive or could call off the dive "at any time for any reason and not expect any ill repercussions." (Id. at 67–69.) Karras decided to participate in the dive and paired in a buddy group with her husband Thomas. (SOF ¶ 32.).

After some preliminary buoyancy drills and navigation trainings at shallow depths, Hays led the ground toward the sunken boat for a tour. (Id. ) The boat was perched on a ledge 35 or 40–feet down a steep rock wall that continued to drop below the ledge to the bottom of the lake. (SOF ¶ 33.) During the tour of the boat, Karras had trouble maintaining consistent buoyancy. (Pl.'s Thomas Dep. at 108.) Thomas testified that he and Karras both became positively buoyant during the tour, meaning they floated toward the surface. (Id. ) Despite these buoyancy problems, Hays testified that all six students successfully ascended from touring the sunken boat and regrouped at around 15–feet deep for a three-minute safety stop. (SOF ¶ 35.).

Sometime during the safety stop, Hays lost sight of Karras. (Id. ) No one, including Thomas and Hays, saw how Karras became separated from the group. (SOF ¶ 41.) Hays remembers noticing Karras when he glanced up from the countdown timer on his dive computer sometime during the second minute of the stop. (Defs.' Hays Dep. at 102.) But when he looked up forty-five to seventy seconds later, Karras was gone. (Id.; SOF ¶ 41.) Hays signaled for the group to surface where he learned that no one knew where Karras was. (SOF ¶ 36; Defs.' Hays Dep. at 103.) Hays then ordered the group to swim to shore so he could search for the missing Karras. (SOF ¶¶ 37–38.).

Hays first searched for Karras on the surface, but he could not see her. (SOF ¶ 38.) He then retraced the dive underwater, but to no avail. (Id. ) Eventually, other divers around the lake were recruited to aid the search. (Id. ) Over an hour after anyone had seen Karras alive, one of the recruited divers found her 57–feet deep at the bottom of the steep wall and unresponsive. (Id. ¶ 39; Dive Data [Dkt. 48–3] at 3–5.) Divers pulled her body to a dock where medical professionals present at the lake began administered rescue procedures. (SOF ¶ 39.) When EMS arrived, they could not get a pulse from Karras. (Id. ¶ 40.) A helicopter came to transport her to the nearest hospital with a hyperbaric chamber, but she flat-lined in flight. (Id. ).

Plaintiff alleges that these facts prove Defendants were negligent in several ways, including negligently supervising Karras during the dive, ineffectively assisting Karras once rescue was necessary, rendering inadequate care after she was removed from the lake, improperly equipping Karras, understaffing the dive, failing to have proper rescue equipment at the lake, and inadequately training Splash Dive Center employees. (See Pl.'s Compl. ¶ 18; Pl.'s Mem. in Opp'n [Dkt. 48] at 14–15.) In a prior motion, Defendants moved to dismiss this case for failure to sufficiently allege any proximate cause between Defendants' negligence and Karras' drowning. [Dkt. 3.] Defendants also asserted the affirmative defenses of assumption of risk and pre-injury waiver of liability. The Court denied Defendants' motion, finding that Plaintiff satisfied the plausibility pleading standard and that Defendants' affirmative defenses were not yet fit for consideration. [Dkt. 16.] Similarly, in the present summary judgment motion, Defendants argue that proximate causation is lacking and Karras assumed the risk of death. Because reasonable jurors could reach different conclusions on these issues, the Court will deny that motion.

II. Legal Standard

Summary judgment is appropriate only where, on the basis of undisputed material facts, the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56 ; Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). The moving party bears the initial burden of "informing the district court of the basis for its motion" and identifying the matter "it believes demonstrate[s] the absence of a genuine issue of material fact." Celotex, 477 U.S. at 323, 106 S.Ct. 2548. Once a motion for summary judgment is properly made and supported, the opposing party has the burden of showing that a genuine dispute exists. See Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 586–87, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986) ; see also Ray Commc'ns, Inc. v. Clear Channel Commc'ns, Inc., 673 F.3d 294, 299 (4th Cir.2012) (stating the opposing party must "come forward with specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial"). Importantly, the non-moving party must show more than some metaphysical doubt as to the material facts. "[T]he non-moving party ‘may not rest upon mere allegation or denials of his pleading, but must set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial.’ "...