Peter wrote:
I am surprised there isn’t a way around it e.g.
Because the problem is exclusively in peoples imagination. You people have way too vivid imagination about this. It makes me happy I live in a place where personal responsibility and personal risk are valid concepts, also in court, and also for “extreme” activities. However, I believe this to be true also in most of Europe. How else would any activity except sleeping on a couch all day be considered “normal” ?
It really isn’t that hard to wrap ones head around these concepts. A homebuilt plane cannot and will not follow standards for airworthiness for a certified plane. There are no standards to follow, and if one chooses to follow a standard nonetheless, like a design standard, it will never be verified that the standard is followed. It will never be verified because the build process itself doesn’t follow a standard, and the builder himself is not certified. The finished product is therefore not an aircraft after any sort of standard. That is also where liability comes in. Liable for what exactly? according to which standard?
A homebuilt aircraft may very well receive a CoA. But what does that certificate actually mean? It means the aircraft can be flown legally, but also that it is not verified that it follows any standard. That alone is more than enough to block any and all legal actions against the builder. Obviously though, not enough to block vivid imagination 
When selling a homebuilt aircraft, it doesn’t hurt to make this abundantly clear though.
Silvaire wrote:
you seem to be the single most risk averse person I have come across in my life experience
Maybe. I am certainly not the most risk averse person I know, seeing that I do things many run far and away from such as flying light airplanes and I used to travel quite extensively before Covid shut us down.
Franky, I don’t care for my own life but I do take responsibility towards others VERY seriously indeed, particularly since I have a small child and a wife for which I am responsible.
If something happens to me, I could not care less. But I do care if they will suffer as a consequence of my recklessness or lack of responsibility to make sure to the best I can that they will not suffer more than the loss of me.
I know that some people think this a cowardly attitude, but I personally can not live without making darn sure that I have done the humanly possible to avoid risking their lifes or livelyhood with my indulgence. As a father and husband I carry the full responsibility for this and if people think it’s ok to put their families at risk for their own enjoyment, maybe they should have thought first before getting a family in the first place. Or for that matter take any sort of responsibility at all.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I knew a very experienced builder and pilot who crashed into a downtown block of flats with a newly built airplane. His 3rd party insurance was insufficient to cover the damage caused, as he crashed into a block of flats and was killed in the accident.
The question therefore is why was he flying over a congested area in a new homebuilt? At least here, during the ‘new’ period (the testing period) it cannot be over a densely populated area, which a downtown block of flats most certainly is!
alioth wrote:
The question therefore is why was he flying over a congested area in a new homebuilt? At least here, during the ‘new’ period (the testing period) it cannot be over a densely populated area, which a downtown block of flats most certainly is!
That particular accident was one of the most horrible collection of gotchas you can imagine. A top notch pilot with a meticulously constructed airplane designed for record flights which had flown extensively before, so it was not unknown or untested. Yet, it turned out that the airplane in this weight and balance condition was unable to fly. The track it followed was not the intended departure track, which would have lead away from the populated area, but the plane was unable to turn. In the end, with all the planning which got into this, it was the wish to fly that day and reach Oskosh non-stop which led to this disaster.
It is still a sore spot with many of us who admired this guy for his previous flights and as a person, who was very well liked. Yet it was also a wake up call for all of us in more than one way.
arj1 wrote:
What about not selling a plane but a “project”? Even if it completely done, then it would be still the end user who is legally completing the assembly.
Two thoughts on that.
1. This is extremely country dependent if that is possible or not: In some jurisdictions if you sell ist as a “pile of scrap metal” it is exactly that and nobody will ask any more questions regarding liability. Other jurisdictions would not so much look at what you wrote in the contact but what was the intended purpose of the contract. If the price paid, e.g. , is much above the scrap metal price and much more the price for an actually flying airplane (and you can’t claim it is a collector piece for display in a museum) than in such jurisdictions the judge could say that while obviously you called it differently in the contract what you really sold was a flying airplane. Btw: If you really sell only a pile of material there is no to little reason to send the build documentation with it, which also leads to the second point:
2. In most cases the dependants of the buyer will not sue you because of a material fault in the plane itself but because of something in the documentation you sold with the plane (if you don’t, it’s really just a piece of scrap). And in this documentation they might look for cases of “deliberate deception” (with other names in other jurisdiction) so basically try to demonstrate that you willfully stated something wrongly because e.g. you documented a test that you did not accurately perform during the build or you signed a slip of paper stating that everything was built according to the plans while in some cases you deviated, etc.
So the true dilemma is: If you sell your plane without any papers, you likely get away w/o any liability but the plane is basically worthless to the buyer, if you sell it with papers, the dependents of the buyer might sue you on the papers in case of any accident.
My key concern is a completely different one: Perhaps I’m an Angst-driven German that is completely risk averse in your view, but I would never ever bet my life on some home builder I do not know having done a good job. There’s only a handful people on the globe from whom I would buy a homebuilt plane and fly with it – and none of these people would sell any of their babies to me. So the “problem” of having an accident in a homebuilt done by somebody else is extremely theoretic to me…
Malibuflyer wrote:
My key concern is a completely different one: Perhaps I’m an Angst-driven German that is completely risk averse in your view, but I would never ever bet my life on some home builder I do not know having done a good job. There’s only a handful people on the globe from whom I would buy a homebuilt plane and fly with it – and none of these people would sell any of their babies to me. So the “problem” of having an accident in a homebuilt done by somebody else is extremely theoretic to me…
@Malibuflyer, I’m actually there with you on buying a homebuilt! :)
I can think of myself buying into a project while it is still in progress and take part in it and ensure it is done correctly and see what inspector is checking.
I was just thinking from the other point of view: how the seller can protect themselves. My only thought was that they sell an “incomplete project”, a set of parts. Not the pile of metal but “mostly complete” aircraft. In that case the dependants of the buyer will have to prove that it was not the buyer who has done something wrong. But you are right, if the judge decides something, then there is no way around this.
PS: about the cost – looking at the prices of some finished homebuilts it feels as if they are being sold as a pile of debris + motor/prop + some instruments. :)
So you buy a certified aircraft which is 50 years old and has had some 8 to 10 previous owners.
You have an accident which you feel was caused by some passed maintenance anomaly.
Nothing was found at your careful pre buy inspection and the aircraft passed its last annual and has a current ARC. Who are you going to sue?
Would the same not apply to an accident in a homebuilt, which has its LAA permit, documentation etc?
gallois wrote:
Nothing was found at your careful pre buy inspection and the aircraft passed its last annual and has a current ARC. Who are you going to sue?
Would the same not apply to an accident in a homebuilt, which has its LAA permit, documentation etc?
I would expect the liability is not related to maintenance or previous owners, they could have the aircraft run for 50 years on fuel + oil without touching anything else but the builder does have some liability on design & manufacturing defects unless it’s well documented, although I doubt any of the liability survives if aircraft is built and sold as “not flyable” or design drawing are open sourced
There are load of “quirky and unflyable aircrafts” sitting in museums and ramps, some of them even fly regularly !
This one for example, can I buy it, fly it and sue the guy?
[ duff image fixed ]
Would the same not apply to an accident in a homebuilt, which has its LAA permit, documentation etc?
These are obviously excellent questions, and the answer must lie in national legislation, and is probably specific to sales of vehicles.
For example, in the UK, when you sell a house, you have no liability unless you made specific representations (e.g. “rewired in 2019” when it was last rewired in 1958) and that is why buyers send you a long questionnaire with lots of questions, to induce you into making such representations, so you have to answer in a way which avoids answering directly, while not being suggestive of concealment 
And same if you sell a car.
So I don’t know where any extra liability comes in with a kit built plane. Bad wiring in a house could kill somebody, and there is no law against DIY wiring (well, not yet, though electricians would absolutely love to get one). The difference? Perhaps is it that there is an established process where the buyer is assumed to have done due diligence, on a house or a car.
One possibly relevant principle is the extent to which “authority approval” is involved. With a CofA plane, there is a “rigorous” regime for inspection and maintenance (annuals, etc) and a national CAA rep has to inspect and put it on the national register. This provides a sort of liability backstop (you could sue the maint co. but they “should” be insured). With some kitplane registries there may be an initial inspection by an “authority” but there are none after that.
We do have lawyers here but thus far they have seen silent
The UK legal position for most private transfers of property is caveat emptor, Latin for ‘let the buyer beware’. It is almost impossible get redress on a private transaction unless, as @Peter says, you have made specific representations on something tangible that turns out not to be true.
If you are in business and selling things to all-comers then the situation is different and liabilities arise through legislation such as the Sale of Goods Act – it must be ‘fit for purpose’, ‘of merchantable quality’ and things like that.
It is extremely unlikely that anyone in the UK could be successfully sued for design defects in a homebuilt aircraft that was crashed by a subsequent owner. For a start they sell it as the previous owner, not the manufacturer, and it is (generally) not a business operation. My ex-parents in law lost out big time on this – they bought a house (a converted barn) from the developer and when problems arose they sought redress under the laws pertaining to new house building, but the developer had structured things such that he sold it to them in a private capacity and not from his development business = no liability.
Where would it end? Consider the 1972 Triumph Spitfire in my garage – just about the only original components are the chassis, the bodytub and perhaps some bits of the suspension. A goodly proportion of its function depends on parts sourced and fitted by me, in fact all the important bits – engine, gearbox, wheels, brakes, steering, you name it. Yet if I sell it and a year later the brakes fail and two occupants are killed am I liable? Of course not.
Peter wrote:
With some kitplane registries there may be an initial inspection by an “authority” but there are none after that.
Under the LAA permit scheme you require an annual sign-off from an inspector appointed by the LAA. It is not as invasive as a CofA annual inspection, but they do not give your aeroplane an easy ride and it is actually a regulatory inspection with a pass/fail element, unlike a CofA annual which is basically a maintenance operation carried out by a licenced professional. I prefer the LAA system as it comes with no requirement to purchase maintenance services from the person/company doing it.
