Insurance covers negligence, thats the whole point. When you rear end someone in your car, you were negligent. Your insurance still has to cover you and pay for your defense in court. Also, pretty sure there are probably zero employees of Greg Biffle Aviation Leasing LLC. More likely it's just a tax advantage entity for Greg to buy his plane and write things off on his taxes.

In my example above, the employees of John's Roofing aren't on the hook for anything. If the company goes under, yes, his roofers he employs are out of a job. But they can work for another roofing company. And they aren't going to be on the hook for any damages even if they're the ones responsible.

This part of the hypo implicates "Respondeat Superior" (latin) or "Let the master answer." (English). If you own a bar and your bouncer beats some guy within an inch of his life, you have to answer for the bouncer's actions he took within his job duties. If your bouncer got into a DUI accident on the way home that killed a family, you're not liable because he wasn't performing his job when the accident happened.

But if you are WalMart and your truck driver falls asleep at the wheel and rear ends Tracy Morgan, WalMart is on the hook. This also brings up the idea in the law of "always go for the deepest pockets first." Or "You can't get blood from a stone." Tracy Morgan isn't going to really try to get money out of the truck driver, because that guy has no money to pay you. He's going after WalMart because they have money.

If I had to guess who gets sued, if anyone, it would be the pilot who it doesn't sound like was an employee of GB Aviation Leasing LLC. I don't know if he is a friend of Biffle or just someone he contracted to fly the plane, but he doesn't seem like an employee of a company that has one 1981 cessna citation to its name.