The lawyer had no choice but to name every conceivable government actor; if he didn’t name the first responders, then, when he tried to pursue the claim that the road should have been blocked — a claim that looks awfully strong, given the other two cars that fell in — the government could say his injuries are really all the fault of the first responders. I’ve seen that before. This way, the lawyer cuts off that dishonest argument.

There is zero chance “the people who saved him” will pay a dime; good odds they won’t even be named on the complaint.

This sort of thing ticks me off.

Despite what he believes, Fire Departments don’t have a legally enforceable responsibility to rescue him at all, much less on his timeline.

Getting a Swiftwater trained Dive Rescue team to the scene took time. In my community, it would probably take 4 hours, we don’t have one of our own.

If the Chief had said, “Okay it’s been 30 minutes, any volunteers to go rescue him?”, and one of those rescuers had died, the Chief could have been held civilly and criminally liable for the death of a rescuer without adequate training.

Even though the victim was yelling for help, he was inside the car on a flooded river. I have no evidence that anyone knew he was there or that he was alive. Rivers are noisy, fire trucks are noisy. Without a an affirmative response from the fire department in question, I will believe that they never heard him and did not know he was alive in the car until the diver looking for a body found him.