Re: Soils Reports under CBC 1802.2

A slight correction. While cities have Sovereign Immunity the non-elected public servents do not have absolute immunity. Case law has established that if a goverment employee is clearly acting outside the laws and regulations regulating his activities he can be found personally liable. The case law includes at least one instance where a building inspector exceeded his authority. It is my understanding that the bar is set relatively high so that this would not kick in in most situations.

Never the less if a plan checker or building official were to require conformance with some requirement that could not be justified based on some law or regulation, and he had reason to believe that no such regulation existed then he could be found personally liable. This happens more often than you might guess.

The reason that there is not more litigation is that in most instances it is nor economical to sue the individual.

It does not appear that this situation would arrise when deciding whether a soils report is needed since the building official is allowed the choice and there is no requirement that he use common sense.

Mark Gilligan

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