This should apply to airframe manufacturers too

Ray Andraka wrote:
Jim Stewart wrote:


I don't think you can take it that far. Some people
*need* to have pacemakers. If all the pacemaker
companies are sued out of existence, many more people
will die. Based on that, perhaps a pacemaker company
deserves an extra level of protection in order to
keep the greater number of people alive. I don't
think the argument follows for aviation.

Same could be said for aicraft component manufacturers. For example the
carburetor on my Cherokee Six was manufactured by Precision Airmotive,
which is the sole source for parts for that carburetor. Precision also
made the carburetors for the majority of the piston powered aircraft in
the fleet. They got sued last fall for an outrageous sum and abruptly
pulled out of the aircraft carburetor business because they could no
longer obtain liability insurance. The tight federal regulation over
aircraft has prevented any significant improvements to the pre-WWII
carburetor design used on these aircraft. The design is 80 years old,
has been installed on tens of thousands of aircraft, and is proven with
millions of hours of flight time. Without anybody making spare parts,
the likelihood of failures will increase as existing parts are repaired
instead of being replaced, exposing more people to potential crashes.
How is this materially different than your example with the pacemaker
company?

People won't die if they can't fly their Cherokee Six.