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"Bryan Martin" wrote in message
...
in article , jls at
wrote on 6/25/04 9:34 PM:

I have never seen a judgment
awarded to an injured plaintiff when there wasn't some proof of
negligence
or defective design proximately causing the injury.

You need to get your nose out of those law books and take a look at the
real
world, you're living in a fantasy world.

Ah, my partisan friend, you need to furnish evidence it -- a case going to
the jury without evidence of negligence -- has happened, otherwise be
thought of as shooting from the hip with a $2 pistol.

I haven't read much law since taking the bar in the 70's, haven't needed to
all that much, but I've learned people's "facts" often lack substance and
substantiation, and will twist the facts to suit their purpose. It's always
good then to consider what one has at stake when one takes a position, and
you rarely if ever have a pilot or CFI or aircraft owner or engineer or
owner of an FBO taking the side of a plaintiff like the Carnahan widow.

In the Carnahan case there was indeed testimony that the Parker-Hannifin
gyro failed, that P-H gyros had performance problems on other occasions in
other aircraft, and therefore P-H had notice of a defect or defects needing
to be cured. At any rate P-H settled, constituting an admission of
liability. The other character in this thread saying there was no such
evidence is hanging his hat on AOPA's take of the evidence. You could
hardly say THEY are objective at AOPA in these controversies ---- about as
objective as Michael Moore is about George Bush.

I just read another whiner complaining that the jury disregarded the NTSB
report in the Carnahan case, but he is naive because ordinarily those
reports, just like a highway patrolman's report of an auto accident, are and
always have been inadmissible as evidence before a jury. I'd be willing
the bet the jury never saw the NTSB report, so that guy is writing something
deceptive, something to mislead the reader, in order to justify his position
against the lawsuit.

Then you hear, Oh, we're going to be priced out of the sky by these
lawsuits. They're so frivolous, and so costly and we'll never be able to
buy another gyro ever again, and oh the sky is falling and oh these trial
lawyers are ruining the world, sucking the very lifeblood out of general
aviation. Well buuuullll ****. The widow Carnahan was looking for 100
million and she got 4. Big deal.