In article .com,
"Longworth" 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:


What Rick doesn't say, at least in your excerpt, is what the pilot's
estate was worth. My entire point is that the risk isn't that great
with $100k sub limits on a $1M policy, because if your estate is worth
more than $1M the policy isn't going to protect you anyway. If your
estate is worth, say, $500k, there isn't much incentive IMO to go after
it as a plaintiff because, in the end, the plaintiff may not wind up
with much more than $100k even if they're successful in the lawsuit.

My other point is that I don't intentionally do stupid things in the
airplane, allowing me to avoid the type of accident that Rick's example
illustrates.

Though there are exceptions to every rule, my guess is that most cases
where passengers litigate against a pilot are won or lost based on the
plaintiff's ability to prove willful negligence on the part of the pilot
or operator. If you don't do stupid things with your airplane, you
significantly reduce your risk of bad things happening.



JKG