Thats an interesting thought Turboman. But I'm not convinced.
Hypothectical.- You get a call fron a guy you have helped out in the past,and he he sayes he is getting frantic down there and he wants you to come and jump into his new 802 so that he can jump out for a bit and organise things. You are glad to help. You have done this for him before and he always pays you 18% and he is a good payer. It's as busy as all hell and before you can turn around twice 12 days of dawn to dusk have passed.
Then next morning you are airborne in the wee hours again and just as the sun is starting to poke is nose up over the horizon you arrive at a series ob blocks to do and they have a few wires arround. You have a good look arround and decide how you are going to aproach the first block. there is a wire running along the edge of the opposie end and another running along the block beside you. You have done an orbit of the block and are happy with what you see. About 3/4 of the way down the first run something catches your eye and with horror you notice a single earth return spuring off the wire in the next field and cutting accross your block and joining onto one of the poles at the far end. You reef back but too late and bingo the prop takes it out.
with a hugh knot in your gut you pull around into an orbit to see what you had done.
What you don't know is that the wire srtike on the blade has fractured the seal and within seconds most of the engine oil is pumped out and sensing this the engine shuts down. This happens just as you are in a 60o angle of bank looking down with a full load at 60 feet!!
The ensueing forced landing is about what you would expect from that position with water from the wet season everywhere and the machine digs in badly and flips over onto its back and is destroyed.
On the good side you manage to extracate yourself with nothing more than a badly sprained ankle and some cuts and bruises.
The reaction of the owner is pretty much what you would expect under the circumstances and you are feeling pretty bloody lousy yourself and are having a very hard time coming to terms with how you didn't pick up that wire on your inspection of the block. Was it the sun ? Was it the drift on the 1/4 window ? Who knows but as sure as hell you missed it!!
The next day you get someone to drive you out to be there at the recovery of the machine and the owner comes up and asked you how did you not see that wire. He has changed a bit in the past 24hrs and is quite hostile toward you.
You go home and three weeks later you recieve a letter from his solicitors informing you that they are going to seek damages from you in regard to the excess on the machine. $125,000 and that they will also be making a further claim against you for the lost production of work that the machine would have been expected to do over the next 7 days after the accident.
The legal basis of the claims will be that you acted in a reckless manner in your role as a contract pilot and that you did not preform a full and proper inspection of the job site and in that case you were soley responsible for the losses incured to there client!
So in this case Turbo would you be happy to cough up maybe a couple of hundred grand??