Could transferring a laptop hard drive image to another Hard Drive cause bad sectors?

Here is the deal, I traded an 80 GB Hard Drive, which was seemingly running fine on my laptop, for three 40GB Hard Drives, after the swap the other party had an image of his laptop hard drive on his desktop of his PC he attempted to transfer it to the 80GB Hard Drive and he says it produced "Bad Sectors" now he wants me to return the three hard drives he traded me for the 80 GB - But he has shipped the 80 GB Hard Drive to a friend of his in Sacramento to retrieve data and said he wouldn't be surprised if it was dead when he gets it back because of the "Bad Sectors" - I am hesitant to do anything further with him.  He said that when he decided to make the trade with me he transferred an image of his laptop hard drive to his desktop computers desktop, then when he returned with the 80 Gig Hard Drive he started using "Ghost" to transfer the image to the 80 GB Hard Drive and it "produced" the "Bad Sectors".  

I contend; based on his own language - "it produced" that his file transfer caused the damage and the hard drive was in good working order when he picked it up.  At the time of the transaction I offered him an opportunity to run a disk check with software I have from HP, he declined and waited while I checked the three 40 GB Hard Drives.

Now I do a lot of buying, selling, trading of laptops, and the associated parts and software, I have a stellar reputation in the community in which I live, so if this is "my responsibility" then I would want to accept it, etc... but I feel like the facts are such that he damaged this hard drive and I bear no further responsibility, especially in lieu of the fact that he has now shipped the 80 Gig from San Francisco to Sacramento and wants me to reverse our transaction when he gets it back?  I need to know if this ghosting could have been the reason for the bad sectors?  HELP!