CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico (4 June 2006) -- The death of a Sammamish man who drowned while scuba diving in Mexico has prompted a civil lawsuit against an international hotel chain. Software salesman Ricardo D. Loya drowned two years ago last week, while diving in Cabo San Lucas. In Mexico on a business trip, Loya was enticed by a brochure in his hotel room offering scuba diving under the guidance of a trained and experience "dive master" certified by PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, his family's attorney said. It's uncertain exactly how or why Loya drowned in the Pacific Ocean, attorney Martin Fox said. But it's clear that the dive operation booked for Loya by the Westin Club Regina hotel and resort wasn't PADI-trained and certified, nor was it equipped for safe diving as Loya was promised, the family's lawsuit says. Loya left behind a wife and two young daughters in Sammamish. Fox said the tragedy that struck this family should be a warning to travelers who put their trust in hotels and small dive operations in countries like Mexico. "The problem is you got a very nice resort that has a good reputation and you assume they're going to send their hotel guest to reputable places," Fox said. "You have to rely on the hotel. They're down there. They should know who is reputable." The details of what happened underwater are murky, but Fox said the dive master leading the trip disappeared before Loya apparently got in trouble and drowned. | | His diving partner turned around, he said, and Loya had slipped out of site. The next time anyone saw him, he was unconscious. Rescuers pulled the man's body onto a boat and tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late. The lawsuit, filed this week in King County Superior Court, names the resort owner, White Plains, N.Y.-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Westin Hotel Co., Xplora Adventours Los Cabos and Cabo Pulmo, the dive shop that provided a boat and a purported dive master. The suit asks for no specific monetary damages. No one from Starwood Hotels & Resorts could be reached for comment. Fox said the businesses breached a contract with Loya and negligently sent him on a $146 dive near Cabo Pulmo reef with an uncertified operation. Fox alleges that neither the dive master nor the dive operation were fully certified by PADI as the hotel and other literature promised. "The dive master left him and he drowned," Fox said. "It was an accident that shouldn't have happened." SOURCE - King County Journal |
