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<< Lancair Builders' Mail List >>
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Let me take a second and last stab at this plan.
Rick Argente recently reported accident statistics on Lancair type
aircraft. Most Lancair accidents investigated by the NTSB resulted in
fatalities (only 14 out of 49 accidents were nonfatal; lancair.list,
27OCT00). This staggering statistic (aside being clear admonition to
always fly safely) suggests serious risk on selling your Lancair. The
risk of death is even greater upon selling your Lancair to a fresh pilot
who has little or no experience in a Lancair and probably has low time
in other high-performance airplanes.
To protect yourself administratively, you should require that any buyer
take high-performance flight training and be certified by a CFI in
high-performance, complex aircraft. Additionally, you might require
that the buyer take a minimum of five hours training from Lancair before
he be permitted to buy your aircraft. Perhaps too, you should require
that the buyer have a certified mechanic inspect your airplane before
the sale and you could exhaustively explain the risks of buying this
experimental plane to the buyer in the sales contract and in a "General
Release" and you might even insist in writing that the buyer consult his
attorney before making the purchase.
Beyond these and other logical measures...(and please forgive me for
discussing such dark thoughts but...)
-at a time such as this, where you have just sold your Lancair and the
pilot has crashed and died, wouldn't you want to have approximately
$500,000 in a legal fund dedicated to fight the legal claims that are
nearly sure to come? This is the protection that a term life policy can
provide. Yes, it does not protect you if the pilot lives throughout the
period of the term of the policy (and a “grace” term thereafter) but,
with a policy, you do have your legal defense funds available in the
event of the buyer's death. This protection is better than none and may
be better than most artfully crafted legal "dodges" because trusts and
partnerships are sometimes recognized by the courts as being contrived
to protect the seller under circumstances where negligence is alleged
and this may be found to be contrary to public policy and therefore
void. Further, having such a term life policy in your possession with
whatever protection it may afford does not prevent you from also using
trusts and partnerships for further protection. One last point, the
liability we are discussing here will (should) almost always be traced
to the person (not organization) that is listed as the builder and who
has the mechanic’s license specific to that plane tail number.
So, I am offering that a term life policy coupled with other protection
mechanisms is probably superior to the use of legal mechanisms alone.
The term policy will put cash in the seller's hands for his legal
defense. Further, the very size of such a legal fund should discourage
litigation especially if, after a waiting period, those funds were to be
gifted (per sales contract) to the estate of the deceased (assuming
releases are signed by all surviving family members and other potential
claimants).
Again, I am just a reasonable man and am not an attorney —but this plan
sounds reasonable to me. For now and the foreseeable future, I am going
to heed Brent's advise and just fly and enjoy my Lancair
Greg Nelson
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LML website: http://www.olsusa.com/Users/Mkaye/maillist.html
LML Builders' Bookstore: http://www.buildersbooks.com/lancair
Please send your photos and drawings to marvkaye@olsusa.com.
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