First your father isn't a manufacturer of a product, so there is no strict liability that car manufacturers face. Secondly, Burt remembered a single home builder that was sued. Burt talked the lawyers out of the suit. Burt offered to be our experts in any suit we were involved in - he has never had to testify for us. Other than that, I've been watching for 30 years and the homebuilders have not been a target yet. There is very slim litigation against manufacturers like the fuel valve maker for the mother and daughter of John Denver who sued over the famous sticky valves, even though John couldn't reach the valve - the case, had it been against a deep pocket might have been worth $100,000,000 but never reached trial but the valve maker's insurer settled out for a small policy. The builder who put the valve in the unusual place was not sued. The prior owner was sued so as to have a target in California - and he was assured he'd be dropped later... and he was...the maintenance people on the aircraft were deposed but not sued. Now, if you have an estate of 10 million, then you might be worth the lawyer's time to go prove something as unique as a hand built plane is worth suing over. But they don't want to have some gray haired old gentleman sitting there as defendant, especially when he can say it flew fine for 800 hours and the pilot's silly mistakes are then trotted in front of the Jury...we just are not seeing homebuilder suits. It is more likely you'll be hit by lightening. If we could insure for our building efforts we might be a target...but we can't...
Beagle
Beagle
