What is the duty on the person doing it, and does it vary with their qualifications?
AIUI (IANAL) the more qualifications you have the more you are liable, normally.
But it isn’t so simple.
For example I had a prop strike in 2002 with an instructor in the RHS during differences training (I wasn’t legal to fly the plane although obviously I was legal to taxi it, as would be my grandmother probably). He walked off it saying he was doing me a private favour and not doing it through his school. Of course it was never invoiced. And a lot of prebuys are done as a private favour. I have done a few myself, and recently offered to do one, free, with my A&P/EASA66 guy, for somebody else, informally (that job was never done, and sadly turned out to be a can of worms for the new owner).
My A&P/EASA66 guy does prebuys and obviously charges for them (it takes 2 days; one to check paperwork and one to look at the plane). I reckon he is liable. However, he cannot be expected to find an issue which is not readily visible. Or maybe that is wrong… it has been ruled wrong for UK house surveys (that “hidden defect” disclaimer is not valid and the surveyor is liable even for such defects).
The answer may be country dependent of course. Here in the UK we have the thing called “duty of care” which few seem to understand but many interpret in the most restrictive way that suits them.
it has been ruled wrong for UK house surveys (that disclaimer is not valid and the surveyor is liable even for expressly excluded and not visible defects).
Peter I’ve been doing building surveys for more than forty years and the limitations of inspection and liability are made clear to the client both before the survey and within the body of any report, and form the basis of contract. This is entirely normal in the case in building inspections and which I would have expected to also apply to pre buy inspections provided that the limitations are clearly explained to the client.
Of course there has been much litigation as to what should reasonably have been inspected or suspected in the first place!
We once had a pre-buy done by a well known (at the time) company. The engineer (who was also the owner of the business) went over to the USA from England and missed the fact that both the PT6 engines on the aircraft had done quite a lot more hours than the purchase contract and specification said. It was not a trivial amount of money involved, it was over 200 hours a side if my memory is correct. [edit: the airframe too]
Anyway, we took advice and in the end neither the seller not the engineers who did the pre-buy would cough up, and we ended up swallowing he notional loss as litigation was far from certain to succeed.
The owner of the firm is now retired BTW.
flybymike wrote:
the limitations of inspection and liability are made clear to the client both before the survey and within the body of any report, and form the basis of contract.
+ 1
Peter wrote:
What is the duty on the person doing it, and does it vary with their qualifications?
Normal industry practice is the consulting company has no liability whatsoever. He is selling a service, not a product, and can only be liable for the cost/quality of his service. Qualifications doesn’t matter, but why would anyone use someone with no qualifications? It’s using his qualifications you pay for.
Normal industry practice is the consulting company has no liability whatsoever.
Not so here in Germany. Our company has it’s own licensed maintenace department and occasionally does pre-purchase inspections for third parties. The paperwork regarding liability that the customers (seller&buyer) need to sign is almost ten pages thick…
But this is even worse in other fields. As a horseownwer I know that many veterinarians refuse to do pre-purchase inspections on horses (yes, they are done there too as the value of a horse can be in the same order of magnitude as an aeroplane) because they can be held liable for years to come.
what_next wrote:
The paperwork regarding liability that the customers (seller&buyer) need to sign is almost ten pages thick
Yes, but what does the paper say?
The first thing to look at is the actual national law.
Litigation in UK law and French law have about nothing in common.
I know that in French law, a hidden defect is always the responsibility of the seller.
A difference that is made though, is that a professional seller is deemed to know more and therefore “hidden defect” will have a broader definition than for a private seller. The other thing is that it cascades. i.e. you buy a car used to a private person and there’s a factory hidden default that come to light. The private seller is liable but in his regard, the factory is responsible. You would sue him and he would sue the factory.
As an aside, does France not have the concept of buying “as seen” i.e. caveat emptor (“buyer beware”)?
In the UK if you sell somebody a car, privately, and provided you have not made any specific warranties about it then it doesn’t matter how bad a wreck it is; there is no liability on you, the seller. Same with a house (which is why people get a survey done, so they can sue the surveyor) and same with a plane.
Peter wrote:
As an aside, does France not have the concept of buying “as seen” i.e. caveat emptor (“buyer beware”)?
I looked it up and it seems that as a private seller you can mention that you give no warranty on the object being sold.
That’s about the only thing you can do…
You always buy “as seen”, that’s the point of “hidden defect” 
