Babylon: Apart from accidents where a maintenance error is deemed the cause and then said engineer finds his or her self up in court, so the buck doesn't really stop with pilots does it? When a pilot gets off the a/c thats the end of it as far as they are concerned, I fit a part and sign for it, I am responsible for the assembly, function and condition of said part as long as its on the aircraft, that could be any number of years.
But what do I know.