Mark, Unfortunately you are right about the worth of a signed statement from a passenger. I was called in for jury duty a few years back for a lawsuit brought by the family of a overweight and out of shape young executive that had attended one of the adventure team building camps where they do scary stuff like traversing rope bridges and being supported by their counterparts from their same office. The camp required that he sign a big liability waiver stating that the exertion and excitement could lead to death especially for someone in poor health and higher risk for such things. The camp also required that he obtain and submit a note from his doctor stating that he was good to go. Well, pudgy dropped dead and the family sued. In the jury selection process they waived the liability waver in the air and explained what the camp had done to attempt to protect themselves, and said it still wasn't fair to the family. Each of us potential jurors were asked questions to which we responded if we had had any experience along these lines. I responded that I had been responsible for issuing liability waivers in a position I had once and that it was extremely frustrating to see that regardless of a business's attempt to protect themselves and cause the signer to accept their part of the risk, the result is that it still ends up in court. Funny thing, I didn't get selected. I saw later that the family lost the case, but of course the camp and their insurance company paid a lot of lawyer fees and prep costs.
I met the guy who sued Rutan and put an end to RAF plan sales. The guy was not playing with a full deck and from what I saw of his work convinced me that he should have never been allowed to go near an airplane. He sued and won and the homebuilt community lost huge. Its just too bad that the guy lived through his crash, because the cause had nothing to do with the design other than the design allowed him to get it into the air in order to have the crash. Its a sad situation with our legal system. Toad Denver --- On Fri, 12/12/08, Mark Langford <n5...@hiwaay.net> wrote: From: Mark Langford <n5...@hiwaay.net> Subject: Re: KR> vw engines, liability To: "KRnet" <kr...@mylist.net> List-Post: krnet@list.krnet.org Date: Friday, December 12, 2008, 6:36 AM Mark W wrote: > So tell him you are doing a "dune buggy". You are doing experimental > aircraft... the risk is yours (clearly stated in the regs... his only risk > is if he fails to provide what he advertises; i.e., if you crash after > accepting his disclaimers, you need good insurance). If you tell him you're building an "offroad vehicle", at least you're not lying to him. As for the risk, with the system we have in the U.S. today, anybody that has anything to do with an airplane is at risk, regardless of what the regulations say. If somebody can convince a jury that the engine builder was negligent, he's going to be in financial trouble. The guy I buy my VW parts from that I use on my plane covers his ears when I start talking about airplanes, and starts singing songs and stuff. I can't blame 'em. I'm starting to get very leary of flying passengers. I can make people sign statements all day long that they won't sue me if they die, but their families still can and probably will sue, and now my wife and family suffer even if I'm gone. And if I take out a family of four in a crash, their relatives will likely sue my pants off, or at least my estate, and there is no amount of paper signing that will alleviate that possibility. I'm not trying to start any kind of political argument, but until this country revises its legal system, that's the fear we live with, and why it's stifling entrepreneurship around the country. Things are a lot different in Europe where if you sue and lose, you pay both sets of lawyers. People are a lot less likely to sue if they know it's frivolous and it's going to cost them dearly to do it if they don't win... Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL mail: N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website: www.N56ML.com _______________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/krsrch/index.jsp to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html
