Gosh no one should be selling you things with defects like that. I know the whole ‘buyer beware’ thing, but really, it’s just not right to sell things which have dangerous defects. People do do it though, time and time again. Not right.
Yes, unfortunately too much time has passed for me to do anything about it now. He was a nice chap and I'm inclined to believe he didn't know about the cracks. They were hard to spot until I cleaned them up.