Plaintiff was a guest at Defendant’s beachfront hotel in Miramar Beach over the Fourth of July holiday weekend in 2024. Defendant owned the dry sand portion of the beach in front of the hotel, and it rented chairs and other concessions to hotel guests using the beach.
On the morning of July 6, Plaintiff entered the water of what is now known as the Gulf of America from the hotel’s private beach despite seeing a yellow flag warning beachgoers to exercise caution in the water due to the presence of “moderate surf and/or currents.” Plaintiff went out to hip-deep water, and after 10 to 15 minutes, she exited the water without any issue.
After lunch, Plaintiff re-entered the water despite noticing that there were more waves than there were in the morning. Plaintiff went further out into the water than she did in the morning, but when the weather started to worsen and the water became more turbulent and “murky,” Plaintiff decided to head back to the beach.
While heading back, Plaintiff allegedly got stuck in an “underwater trench” that was at least waist-deep. While Plaintiff was stuck in the trench, she was allegedly hit by a wave that knocked her forward and caused her to strike her head on an adjacent nearshore sandbar with such force that she suffered a severe cervical spine injury that rendered her quadriplegic.
Defendant filed Daubert motions to limit or exclude the testimony of two of Plaintiff’s experts, John Fletemeyer, Ed.D., and Gary Deel, Ph.D.
Aquatic Safety Expert Witness
John Robert Fletemeyer, Ed.D. has been continuously and professionally involved in aquatic safety for more than 50 years and have acquired several professional certifications including instructor certifications from the American Red Cross (First Responder, BLS, CPR and AED Instructor), YMCA of the USA Lifeguard Instructor, World Lifesaving Training Officer, licensed EMT, NAUI Instructor, PADI instructor, USLA Certification Accreditation officer, and Swift Water Rescue Specialist.
He has been awarded several postgraduate degrees including graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin (M.A.), University of Cape Town (M.S. Honors) and Florida International University (Ed.D). He has held teaching and research positions at Broward College, Nova University and Florida International University.
Fletemeyer has been retained in over 500 criminal and civil cases involving drowning and serious aquatic incidents.
Hospitality Expert Witness
Gary Lee Deel spent ten years in professional work within the hospitality industry, including hotels, motels, resorts, restaurants, amusement parks, attractions, casinos, golf courses, dayclubs, nightclubs, meetings and events, and other aspects of the industry which are commonly integral to hotel and resort operations.
He has also spent more than 16 years teaching hospitality management for various hospitality schools including the UCF Rosen College of Hospitality Management, the UF Tourism and Hospitality School, and the UNLV Harrah Hotel College.
Discussion by the Court
John Fletemeyer
Fletemeyer’s expert report broadly opined that Defendant was “grossly negligent for not providing guests with any comprehensive and effective beach safety program that prevents foreseeable injuries and drowning/near drownings from occurring.”
1. Qualification
Defendant argued that Fletemeyer is unqualified to opine on “offshore hydrodynamics, sandbar-formation science, and the design, staffing, and operation of professional open-water rescue systems.” The Court agreed in part.
Fletemeyer did not appear to be qualified in the areas of “hydrodynamics” or “sandbar-formation science,” and Plaintiff represents he will not offer opinions on those issues. Thus, consistent with that representation, Fletemeyer may not opine on how certain underwater terrain and features—such as underwater trenches and sandbars—are formed. Nor may he opine on the science of how water and wave forces interact with the human body.
That, however, did not preclude Fletemeyer from testifying about the risks posed by aquatic conditions like trenches and nearshore sandbars. Indeed, Fletemeyer’s extensive experience—which includes work as a beach patrol supervisor and beach patrol chief for about 28 years with over 50,000 hours supervising beaches and observing hazardous water conditions, along with work as a consultant for over 30 government and private entities (including other Hilton hotels) investigating aquatic injuries and evaluating aquatic safety programs—more than adequately qualifies him to offer opinions about aquatic safety issues and trench/sandbar risks on Florida beaches.
Fletemeyer is also qualified to opine on “professional open-water rescue systems” because, as Defendant acknowledged, Fletemeyer’s “background is strongest in lifeguard operations, beach-safety education, and drowning-prevention advocacy.” Moreover, Fletemeyer has worked with “several hotels” to conduct aquatic safety audits and train staff. Thus, contrary to Defendant’s argument, Fletemeyer is adequately qualified to opine on matters pertaining to the design and implementation of open-water rescue systems.
2. Reliability
Defendant argued that Fletemeyer’s opinions are unreliable because they are primarily based only on his own experience and research. For the most part, the Court disagreed.
Fletemeyer is entitled to rely on his experience, and that experience includes designing aquatic safety programs “consistent with the standards at other resorts,” which include “multiple, coordinated layers of hazard identification, guest education, staff training, and emergency planning specifically directed at the nearshore trench/sandbar hazard and its associated injury risks.”
The Court did not overlook Defendant’s argument that Fletemeyer “relied almost entirely on his own experience … and own 1999 book” rather than invoking a “recognized risk-assessment framework, coastal-engineering protocol, or specific industry standard for beachfront hotels in Florida.”
However, putting aside the fact that an expert can rely on his own experience and that his book is published in a peer-reviewed press, Fletemeyer did refer to industry standards when he discussed how he evaluated Defendant’s aquatic safety programs against the “commonly adopted practices” at comparable resorts.
The Court also did not overlook Defendant’s argument that Fletemeyer failed to conduct “tests, measurements, or quantitative analysis” as to the Gulf’s forces that day or the sandbar, but such analysis is not required for Fletemeyer’s experience-based testimony.
However, the Court agreed with Defendant that Fletemeyer provided no reliable basis for his opinion that the proposed safety measures would have prevented Plaintiff from being injured by the sandbar or made her injury less likely. Nor did he explain how his experience led to his conclusion.
3. Helpfulness
Defendant argued that some of Fletemeyer’s opinions are unhelpful because they are impermissible legal conclusions and invade the province of the jury. The Court agreed in part.
Here, Defendant argued that some of Fletemeyer’s opinions—such as his opinions that Defendant was “negligent” or “grossly negligent” and that Plaintiff’s injury occurred in an area that Defendant had a “duty” for guest safety—are impermissible legal conclusions.
The Court agreed. Thus, Fletemeyer will not be permitted to couch his opinions in that manner.
Defendant also argued that some of Fletemeyer’s opinions improperly commented on witness credibility and usurped the role of the jury. Plaintiff conceded that Fletemeyer’s “characterization” of certain testimony as “questionable” and “his inference that [Defendant] ‘failed to take notice’” of the hazards are “immaterial remarks.”
Gary Deel
Deel is a hospitality operations, safety, and risk management professional and academic. His expert report includes three main opinions, which were more succinctly summarized in his affidavit as follows:
- [Defendant] had a responsibility to ensure a reasonably safe environment for guests entering the Gulf and failed to meet this responsibility.
- [Defendant] knew or should have known of the recurring danger of concealed trenches and sandbars, but it failed to warn guests adequately.
- [Defendant] failed to implement reasonable safety measures and failed to investigate or remediate known hazards, demonstrating systemic safety-management failures.
1. Qualification
Defendant challenged portions of Deel’s opinions by arguing that he is unqualified to opine on the “foreseeability of underwater trenches and sandbars,” the design of professional beach rescue programs that would have prevented the incident, and the “hydrodynamic effects of the underwater topography” because he lacks formal education or training in coastal science and open-water lifeguard operations. The Court agreed.
Deel spent ten years in the hospitality industry working in areas such as hotel operations, safety, security, and risk management, and he has spent sixteen years teaching those same subjects at various universities. That experience provided Deel sufficient qualifications to render opinions on hotel risk management practices, but Plaintiff has not shown that his experience qualifies him to render reliable opinions on the foreseeability or danger of underwater trenches/sandbars within the Gulf’s waters, rip-current formation, or open-water lifeguard operations.
On the latter point, although Deel supposedly relied on “aquatic-safety literature and beach-management practice” to opine that Defendant knew or should have known about the “specific and recurring danger of concealed underwater trenches and sandbars in the Gulf waters,” the “industry standards” he cited for that proposition did not mention that type of hazard.
That said, Deel is more than adequately qualified to opine about industry practices relating to risk identification and management. Thus, while he cannot testify as to the dangerousness of underwater trench and sandbar configurations, he may opine, for example, about whether Defendant complied with (or deviated from) industry standards when it did not “inspect the Gulf waters,” conduct a “risk assessment or safety inspection of its beach operations,” or have “established procedures governing guest safety in the water.”
2. Reliability
Defendant argued that Deel’s opinions are unreliable because they lacked a sound methodology and failed to identify industry standards.
Deel cited several standards for his methodology and explained that those standards, combined with his experience in the hospitality industry, require a systematic review of available data and a determination as to whether certain safety practices sufficiently mitigate known hazards.
Defendant did not critique those “process-oriented guidelines” about structuring investigations and conclusions; it merely argued that Deel’s opinions did not establish substantive hotel safety standards.
Deel is entitled to rely on his own experience so long as his methodology is sound, and it is here because he identified a methodology, cites specific “standards of care” from “authoritative sources” (that he knows from his experience in the industry), and evaluates whether Defendant’s risk management program was consistent with those standards.
The Court did not overlook Defendant’s argument that Deel did not identify a specific industry standard requiring a Florida beachfront hotel to survey underwater sandbars, monitor rip currents, and give hazard-specific warnings. However, the industry standards he cited required hotel operators to establish systematic processes of risk identification and management, including identifying water hazard risks, preparing emergency procedures, and warning guests of hazards. And, according to Deel, those standards apply to both pools and beaches. Thus, Deel reliably applied his methodology to reach his conclusions.
That said, the Court agreed with Defendant that Deel’s opinion that Plaintiff’s injury resulted from Defendant’s “systemic breakdown in safety management” and that had Defendant conformed with industry standards, the incident “more than likely could have been prevented” is ipse dixit because, like Fletemeyer’s causation opinion, there is a substantial analytical gap between the facts and conclusion offered.
3. Helpfulness
Defendant argued that some of Deel’s opinions are impermissible legal conclusions and unhelpful. The Court agreed in part.
Like Fletemeyer, Deel may not couch his opinions as impermissible legal conclusions or invade the province of the jury. Thus, Deel may not opine that Defendant, by commercially controlling the beach, had a “duty” to ensure a reasonably safe environment or how far that duty extended; that Defendant held “a legal right to use and control” the beach; or that Defendant “knew or should have known” about the underwater trench/sandbar hazard being foreseeable. However, as discussed above, he may opine—without phrasing his opinions as legal conclusions—on whether Defendant deviated or complied with industry risk management standards.
Defendant also argued that Deel’s opinions will be unhelpful to the jury because Florida hotels owe no duty to warn of naturally occurring conditions like rip currents and sandbars. But as was the case with Fletemeyer, to the extent Defendant is wrong about the law, Deel’s opinions will be helpful to the jury in determining whether Defendant breached the duty it owed to hotel guests like Plaintiff.
Held
The Court granted in part and denied in part Defendant’s Daubert motions to limit or exclude the testimony of Dr. John Fletemeyer and Dr. Gary Deel.
Key Takeaway
Fletemeyer merely asserted a conclusion and asked the Court to take his word for it based on his experience. That, however, is not enough because it is well established that “nothing in either Daubert or the Federal Rules of Evidence requires a district court to admit opinion evidence that is connected to existing data only by the ipse dixit of the expert.” If admissibility could be established merely by the ipse dixit of an admittedly qualified expert, the reliability prong would be, for all practical purposes, subsumed by the qualification prong.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Davidson V. Sandestin Beach Hotel |
| Docket Number: | 5:24cv247 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Florida Northern |
| Order Date: | March 04, 2026 |
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