grow45 wrote:Don't forget that there is strict liability (ie an indemnity without need to prove fault) on the owner of an aircraft (or operator if it is leased out for more than 14 days) under the Civil Aviation Act 1982 in the case of material loss or damage caused to any person or property on land or water by a person in, or an article, animal or person falling from, an aircraft while in flight, taking off or landing.
This provision (s 76(2)) is poorly drafted, but I'm reasonably the certain that a court would interpret it to cover only injury or damage to some person or property outside the aircraft. The title of s 76 is 'Liability of aircraft in respect of trespass, nuisance and surface damage'.
Liability to a passenger (or some person or property in the air, thus not 'on land or water') would then be a matter of a negligence claim.
For those who don't understand quite how liability insurance works:
1. It covers the liability of the insured, up to the specified limit.
2. Where the insurance company is not sure that the insured is in fact liable (in this case, not negligent), it won't pay unless a successful claim is made against the insured. The policy always says that the insurer will run the defence and cover the costs, but the claim is always against the insured. The claimant has no direct claim against the insurer (outside motor accident cases, which have their own rules on this).
3. If the claimant wins, the court decides the damages and the insurer pays as much of them as the policy provides, leaving the insured to pay the rest. This is why the limit matters.
[Sidenote: If it's any help, it's usually much cheaper to kill someone outright by negligence than it is to injure them severely with long-term consequences. Mid-airs are rare, so landing (or arriving) is the danger period. An assessment of one's technique here might help decide the financial risk, based on how likely the victim is to survive
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