For those that have been around awhile, this is nothing new, or shocking.
This is exactly why Cessna stopped building piston powered airplanes. Additionally, none of the NTSB's findings are admissible in court. You cannot just slap the NTSB's work on the court and say pay up. This, in large part, leaves the door wide open for what happens next. The greiving or greedy family finds an attorney, or more likely one finds them... Reasons given in court for an accident are often twisted or concocted, or a parallel investigation is performed by an attorney to substantiate an NTSB position, if that would be in their favor... If an independent investigation turns up the same result as an NTSB investigation, then the same net argument can be put forth in court, relieving an attorney of making something up... Attorneys, many times, would much prefer to go after a light plane accident as opposed to other heavier aircraft. Take a generic Cessna Citation for example; attorneys have a harder time saying the flight crew wasn't qualified or otherwise lacked training or proving a defect with the aircraft or that the maintenance was improper and not up to date. It makes their job tougher. That is why attorneys foam at the mouth over piston accidents. Cirrus has taken some steps in the right direction to protect themselves but they are not adequate. The best I have seen so far is Frank Robinson's approach, with the special FAR. Unfortunately, this is the world we live in...