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Jonathan Goodish wrote:
Personally, I don't plan to crash and do everything possible to avoid
it. Anyone can decide to sue for any reason, but if you're that
paranoid then you probably shouldn't be carrying passengers to begin
with. Bottom line is that I don't think the $1M smooth policies really
buy you much, nor do I think that the risk is great enough to worry
about the $100k per seat sub limits.

Jonathan,
I used to think in the same line until reading Rick Durden's
article which someone cited earlier in this thread:

http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/189307-1.html

"Some Blunt Talk About Aviation Insurance (or, What You Don't Know
About Sublimits Can Hurt You)
............

Some years ago I worked a case involving a pilot who had a million
dollar policy with $100,000 sublimits. It appeared he was doing
something that might be considered less than safe while carrying one
passenger. He crashed and was killed instantly. The passenger survived
for a period of time, in hideous pain, before dying. The passenger's
estate sued the pilot's estate. The pilot's insurance company put up
the $100,000 sublimit; however, it was nowhere near enough to pay what
was being demanded by the estate of the deceased passenger. Yes, the
estate of the pilot got hit. The widow and children suffered
financially. Now, one of the widow's memories of her husband is that he
was too cheap to buy adequate insurance and it hurt her and the kids.

Yes, the $100,000 sublimit policy (as well as the smooth policy) does
pay for your attorney fees if you are sued. The costs of your defense
do not come out of the $100,000 (or $1 million) pool of money that is
available to pay a person making a claim against you. If you have few
assets beyond your airplane, a $100,000 sublimit policy is likely to be
enough; the injured person will probably take it and go away. However,
by the time you get up to ownership of a Cessna 182 or Cherokee Dakota,
the chances are pretty good that you have assets beyond that airplane;
otherwise you could not have afforded it in the first place. So, to
protect yourself, take a hard look at buying a "smooth" policy, with $1
million completely available, because the chances are that if you screw
up and hurt someone, it won't be a lot of people and each one will have
damages of more than $100,000. You've spent a lot on your airplane --
don't go cheap in protecting yourself and your family.

Sadly, in my experience, a majority of pilots who buy insurance don't
know what a sublimits policy is or what the ramifications are; only
that they are cheaper to buy than a smooth policy.

As I heard recently, cheap is never good and good is never cheap. "

This year, it cost us ~ 1/3 more to get a smooth policy. I consider
the extra $500 is a reasonable price to pay so that we can continue to
enjoy sharing our love of aviation with relatives, friends,
acquaintances and even complete strangers while having some degrees of
protection to our assets. We do everything possible to fly safe but
accidents can happen even to the very experienced and very careful
pilots, IMHO, $100K per passenger is extremely inadequate to pay for
medical cost and compensation for death or serious injuries.

Hai Longworth