Is a homebuilder liable for an aircraft which he sold on?

Here are thirty-four pages of Experimental aircraft currently for sale in the US, owners risking everything to realize a small amount of money from the sale

172driver wrote:

Home/amateur built aircraft are bought and sold all the time, every day of the year. There must be more to that story

Lot of YT story drama & hard feelings? or to keep the myth going, I think something deep was really wrong with that nasty aircraft to get crunched or sentenced like that, I would not be surprised that the builder was concerned about liability ;-)

Here are thirty-four pages of Experimental aircraft currently for sale in the US, owners risking everything to realize a small amount of money from the sale.

The internet is full of service advertisements exposing the publishers to legal risks.

“Everybody is doing it” has always been a poor defense in court and most people grow out of it by age 20 or so.

I sure hope I never “grow up” when it comes to enjoying life, doing things myself, taking beneficial risks, not succumbing to fear…. and I’m glad those 34 pages of people currently selling their homebuilts in the US feel the same way because I might want to buy one of them someday. Or maybe the next one built by the seller with the money harvested from the sale.

I’m surrounded by people building, flying and eventually selling homebuilts without issue. Actually as I write this an RV-6, RV-3 (both built by the same guy), an RV-8 and a Pereira GP-4 are all within 150 ft of me. And more if I kept walking down the hangar row. What fun

Silvaire wrote:

A tendency towards personal drama is the connection.

I think this is spot on. And with it, also a (strong) tendency to disagree with the notion that the aircraft he built and flew for the last 10 years somehow is “not” a “real” aircraft.

Cobalt wrote:

This is not about the owner’s misuse, but about manufacturing defects.

That’s only a play with words, and dodges the real issues. But let’s complicate the example. I am an amateur black smith, making knives as a hobby (which surprisingly many people actually do). I sell them, making a nice little profit on the side. I am really good at it. I mean really good. They look like pieces of art, and on the internet my knives are tested for sharpness, toughness and “fit for purpose” by other amateurs. They are considered THE knife for any occasion. A guy purchase a knife, use it at the camp fire to chop off some wood to start the fire. The wood is tough, he has to really work at it. Then, boing, the blade breaks, goes off like a missile into the eye of his daughters best friend. She looses her eye, and I am sued because I made and sold them a defect knife. The defect in the metal due to imperfect forging was proven positively by a metallurgical lab.

What exactly is my liability? Well, nothing. The knifes I make come with no guaranty to work for any particular use case. They are not tools. They are simply nice ornamented pieces of hand crafted metal according to thousand year old tradition nonetheless. They have not gone through any quality control with respect to hidden defects in the metal caused by erroneous black smithing, as would be the normal procedure for even cheap tools.

@LeSving I’m not sure about that one, particularly in the USA. I think the lawyers could make a lot of money out of that case if you have the money to pay them. The girl’s family would probably get a no win no fee lawyer.
But returning to experimental aircraft, kit build etc. In France, such aircraft still need to get a sort of certificate of air worthiness of some kind from a state approved body. For instance in France a homebuild does not stay on the experimental category for long. Once it is approved it goes under a category such as the CDNR or CNSK or whatever category is best suited to it. Normally this would be carried out by OSAC which is the sort of technical arm of the DGAC. I think in the UK you have the Permit to Fly from the LAA.
In which case the particular aircraft is certified as fit to fly by a state approved body. All details of this and building and safety features must be passed on from the builder to the buyer so it might be difficult to argue in court that the builder is liable any more than the certification body is.
At least this is what happened when the members of the Luçon aeroclub built a 3/4 scale Mosquito from adapted plans.
I don’t know FAA rules on experimentals.

The Turbulents homebuilts I fly have two placards “ALL Aircraft bite fools” & “Aircraft is not certified to ICAO standards, fly at your own risk”, before every flight you have to remove engine cowling inspect fuel, injectors, mags, controls and every bit of the engine, then you remove seats, open controls & every inspection panel, the pre-flight inspection check-list has 3 pages with 50 items, takes 30min-45min to go over everything

There is no POH/AFM, stall speed is 35kts, for cruise you fly as you wish for other phases of flight you fly it at 60kts or you will die one day ;-)

Here is the size of the aircraft

In my certified aircraft, pre-flight inspection is chock & tire & oil & fuel I rarely have to open cowlings or remove seats

Maoraigh wrote:

The multibillionaire would be a magnet for lawyers.

But on the other hand, the multibillionaire can spend literally millions on defence with absolutely zero material impact on their lifestyle.

The problem, I suspect, is if you’re a “one percenter” but not a billionaire (e.g. you own a house, a plane, and some assets like shares) – maybe a net worth of a couple of million, you’re definitely a deep enough pocket to sue, and you will be financially destroyed – literally busted back down to the poor house – if you lose. Even if you win the legal costs have made a noticeable and material impact on your net worth, and may result in a material change in your lifestyle for years after.

A billionaire by contrast could even lose the lawsuit and not have a material change in their standard of living.

But then again, the risk of being sued after selling a homebuilt is minuscule. Someone that risk averse shouldn’t be flying in the first place.

alioth wrote:

But then again, the risk of being sued after selling a homebuilt is minuscule. Someone that risk averse shouldn’t be flying in the first place.

Exactly. Life is full of risks that almost never come to pass. In theory, you could step on the street without looking, a driver swerves to avoid you and ploughs into the taxi queue outside the local court building, killing five lawyers and injuring the rest who will then sue the pants off the driver and of you. It might happen. People still cross the road every day, blissfully unaware of what might happen.

That doesn’t mean the risk isn’t real, though.