The rules lawyer saved my character's life

I've had the privilege of playing in a Pathfinder game over the last year or so. My friend Cody has been running his first game as a DM and we've been playing through Rise of the Runelords. We've just started into chapter 3 and my character for this campaign is Kyrill Four-Finger, a degenerate rogue / mostly trap clearer in this group.

Our last session was played over the weekend, where most of the encounters occurred in the remote town of Turtleback Ferry. To briefly summarize, we're there based on some leads that we have encountered from a cult in the area, we believe they may be planning their next move in this area. We had a very humorous encounter with the town's priest while trying to determine his knowledge of the cult, but major encounter of the night occurred while we were out on the nearby lake searching the wreckage of a noted gambling boat that had recently sunk.

The party was split at this point and we were a bit melee light in a large gar (massive freaking fish) attacked us. The fight was going pretty poorly, our sorcerer had already been knocked out after being swallowed. My thief was in the water as well, attempting to save Aaron's character Zabi.

It was bigger than this, but you get the picture...

In the midst of all of this, my character gets gobbled up the thing as well. I basically had one round to live inside of it and my hope was to get a large sneak attack off to get clear of the monster and pull Zabi free....but that didn't happen....at least not at first. Both of your characters died and the session was about to wrap up....when Aaron, who to his credit is the most entune with the rules regardless of the game we're playing speaks and notes that technically the Gar would have lost it's dexterity bonus while I was inside of it and WHAM sneak attack applies. We rewound to the section and played it out from there....both of our character still didn't up knocked dead, but the group was able to claim our bodies and head back to the temple for some awkward roleplaying with the priest to get us both raised...good times indeed.

Rules lawyers tend to get a bad wrap from the RPG community at times, but I've always been a fan. As someone who runs games by the seat of my pants most times, I haven't always read every fine detail of each characters abilities. My motto is: "It is on the players to be the expert of their character". So thanks Aaron...Kyrill will be back to fight another day and likely run away next time!