(hit "send" too soon)
If they got a good lawyer, he'd kept telling the jury "twenty-seven YEARS
they knew about this deadly design, and they HID it from the public!" The
fact that Rand died in the prototype would also look good in the tabloids,
even though that had nothing to do with spins. ("The Death Plane started
by killing its own designer, and it's been killing people ever since!!!)
I know this is all nonsense, but do you think a jury of non-homebuilders
wouldn't buy it, especially with this guy's grieving widow and children
blubbering in the courtroom every day?
Fortunately, I doubt RR has enough money to be worth suing at this point,
which may be what saved them in 2013. But if I were NVaero, I'd send out
a few "MANDATORY DESIGN CHANGES" of my own, just to be on the safe side.
Mike Taglieri
On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 2:41 AM, Mike T <mctaglieri at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with DJ, and I think other kitplane makers do too. Recently the
> designer of the CX4 (an aluminum single-seat design about 10 years old),
> discovered the cable attachment method on the rudder was causing fatigue
> cracks in the rudder cables of his prototype. So he redesigned the part
> and emailed it as a "MANDATORY DESIGN CHANGE" in big letters to all
> registered builders. Larger kitplane makers like RV make similar
> improvements in their plans all the time.
>
> According to some KR-Net posts, Neil Bingham's design review talking about
> the unsafe aft CG limit appeared in Sport Aviation in 1986 and also in the
> KR Newsletter. Even if Rand-Robinson claimed they never heard of Sport
> Aviation, they can hardly claim they didn't know about the Newsletter
> because they occasionally made contributions to it.
>
> So if the family of the dead pilot in this tragedy wanted to sue
> Rand-Robinson, they could say Jeanette Rand found out 27 years earlier that
> the aft CG limit in the plans was an error that could kill people, but RR
> never bothered to change the plans or even mention the problem.
>
> I'm not saying I'm worried about this. The family probably doesn't want
> to sue, and if they did they'd have to prove that the original builder
> didn't vary from the plans in this area, which would be tricky. But if
> they got a good lawyer, he'd kept telling the jury "twenty-seven YEARS
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Dj Merrill via KRnet <
> krnet at list.krnet.org> wrote:
>
>> On 09/25/2014 02:32 PM, Sid Wood via KRnet wrote:
>> > The principle that will be invoked is: You new something was wrong with
>> > your design because you made a change. Therefore, you are now admitting
>> > to some liability and must pay for your mistake(s).
>>
>> The flip side to this is that you knew that something was wrong with
>> your design, and you didn't release an update therefore you were
>> endangering everyone using your faulty design. Better to own up and
>> release an update for free rather than take the chance on getting sued
>> if/when people start getting hurt.
>>
>> -Dj
>>
>> --
>> Dj Merrill - N1JOV - VP EAA Chapter 87
>> Sportsman 2+2 Builder #7118 N421DJ - http://deej.net/sportsman/
>> Glastar Flyer N866RH - http://deej.net/glastar/
>>
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>>
>
>
