Discussion on liability questions

user41796

Feb 12, 2015 21:13

Anyone have any thoughts about the couple of liability questions we've picked up so far?

user41796

My gut feel on them is they're going to spiral out of control

user41796

One of SE's tenets is that the question should preferably be a real problem faced by the person asking the question.

user41796

So hopefully we'll never see a "real" example of someone facing a liability issue - that's clearly time for the attorney

user41796

That leaves us with hypothetical scenarios. And it seems easy to game those or they can get out of control with endless "what-if" type questions

user41796

OTOH, a general understanding of liability that a PE may face for a sealed design would be a fair question

Air

Feb 12, 2015 21:30

@GlenH7 I am in the middle of answering one, somewhat against my better judgment...

user41796

@Air Yeah... I was about to start an answer or two as well. :-(

Air

I'll need another couple minutes to bang this out and then maybe we can discuss.

user41796

I'm wondering if editing the first of the two (jhabbott's, I believe) to become a duplicate target and then the community putting together a "canonical" type answer

Air

@Glen engineering.stackexchange.com/a/638/368

Have to see if I can get my son to eat lunch and take a nap now; back later.

hazzey

Feb 12, 2015 21:54

@GlenH7 @Air I put the first question up partially to see if those types of questions could work.

user41796

Oh, that's right, it was yours, not jhabbott's

hazzey

My feelings are that ethics and liability are too closely related to work well for the reasons that @GlenH7 stated.

user41796

@hazzey it caused me heartburn. :-)

user41796

I think there's a narrow sliver of questions in that vein that we could (safely?) have within the site. But there's a really bad cascade risk there

hazzey

the answers there are good, but they quickly go off of the relatively narrow question that I tried to ask.

Maybe I just missed the narrow mark!

user41796

Feb 12, 2015 21:58

It may be possible to tighten up the question. I hadn't done so because I felt it should be asked in meta (or in here) first

hazzey

I'll be happy to take it down if it is going to cause too many addon questions. I don't want it to be used as a justification for too many more!

user41796

@hazzey At this point, you can't. :-)

user41796

Once a question has an up voted answer, the OP can't take the question down by themselves. It's a rule SE has in place to prevent people from asking their homework question and then deleting after they get the answer so they don't get caught cheating

user41796

Takes a mod or 5 members of the community to close and then 3 to vote to delete

user41796

The VTD count can grow based upon the number of up votes the question has

hazzey

Feb 12, 2015 22:03

Ah.. I thought that the original questioner had longer than that.

user41796

nope

user41796

Now if all of the up voted answers were voluntarily deleted by their authors, then you could delete

hazzey

I'll be more judicious with throwing out questions on the edges of our scope.

But as far as it being a "real life" question, it is pretty close.

user41796

I'm not sure if we should edit yours to create a duplicate target for future questions, or close (too broad?) and start another to become the dup target

user41796

@hazzey Oh, once we get our site mods it'll be easier to experiment with pushing the edges

Sam Weston

Feb 12, 2015 22:05

How coniving :3

user41796

SE is in many ways a social experiment, so we should be pushing things

user41796

@SamWeston You just needs mods who are tone deaf to shouts of MOD ABUSE!!! :-)

Sam Weston

I dunno though, that kinda sounds like sabotage ha ha

@GlenH7 Ha ha ha

user41796

@SamWeston editing questions like that can be really hard You want to respect the effort the previous posters put into their answers. Radical changes to a question don't show that respect

user41796

So the real question is if the question can be changed without substanitally invalidating what others wrote

hazzey

Feb 12, 2015 22:07

I like the work around of being able to close as duplicate. That is an interesting way to handle topics like that.

user41796

@hazzey Is it? What about the permits?

user41796

@hazzey It's a little bit of an abuse of the system, but someone writes up a canonical question and answer; then everything gets duped against that. Usually the person should mark it as community wiki so folk can't accuse them of rep farming

hazzey

The only difference is that whenever we have had projects like that, the owner either pays us to update them, or there haven't been issues.

user41796

In the jurisdictions I've been in, I can't imagine them being able to pull the permits on a dated design that's no longer compliant.

user41796

And existing permits should have expired

user41796

Feb 12, 2015 22:09

Granted, an engineer can't rely on the permit system to protect them like that

hazzey

That is where it veers into the actual question. We have had projects built years later. My field doesn't have permits.... just codes that are updated every year.

user41796

but it's another safety gate in the system to prevent problems like that

user41796

oh jeez

hazzey

Yeah. I would really like to get opinions on lots of bad things that can happen, but they would really be "poll" questions.

user41796

@hazzey Looked at your profile; I can see that as an issue

user41796

Feb 12, 2015 22:12

because beyond the general "we're gonna do some work" type permit, I can see where some of your work wouldn't fall under a particular permitting category

hazzey

Mechanical and electrical have lots of permits and inspectors, the structural more relies on one person putting their name on an entire building/bridge.

If something bad happens, it is that `one person

who is responsible.

user41796

True. I was just thinking through whether the liability stops at the design, or if there is an obligation to oversee the construction too

user41796

Hyatt bridge collapse for example - the design was just fine. Contractor substituted a different approach and the engineering design firm didn't verify it was built to spec. That's where the engineering design firm was held liable.

user41796

But if the contract ends at signing & sealing the design, and the client then bids out construction to someone else....

hazzey

Somewhat. The contractor has responsibility to do it to plans, but as you get into the actual work there is a surprising amount of gray area.

user41796

Feb 12, 2015 22:16

That kinda gets me to questions that need to be answered with "ask a lawyer" are off-topic. :-)

user41796

@hazzey Oh, I'd believe that

hazzey

Exactly. Those are the areas that I really want other questions on, but they quickly get into trouble. Legal liabilities could be an issue too. You never want to admit that you might have done something that wasn't quite right.

user41796

That gray area is why we design to the reasonable standard at that period in time.

hazzey

or that you weren't sure of.

user41796

right, because in some jurisdictions that's tantamount to admitting guilt or negligence

hazzey

Feb 12, 2015 22:19

And that is why the various engineers are notorious for "adding just a little more factor of safety."

And that has caused its own issues on projects... but I REALLY don't want to go there.

user41796

There's a reason why "factor of safety" is sometime synonymous with CYA

Air

@hazzey I read your question as strictly a legal one, not ethical at all. Liability is not an ethical concept.

hazzey

@Air The ethics sort of come in at the end with the engineer knowing that it was being built.

It was sort of buried though.

user41796

@hazzey I'm with Air on that one - that's a liability still

user41796

ethically, PEs are obligated to maintain public safety as their highest responsibility

user41796

Feb 12, 2015 22:26

But the enforcement of that obligation is liability, which is a legal issue

hazzey

And that is where the two get tied together so much. The only thing that is enforcing ethics is the law.

user41796

correct, which is a slippery slope

Air

The law doesn't exist to enforce ethics, though.

The law exists to safeguard the public welfare.

hazzey

Not solely, but it is a means to an end.

Air

Well, IMO the ideal tags for that question would be one relating to building/construction codes and one relating to law/liability.

hazzey

Feb 12, 2015 22:29

True.

Air

There are plenty of situations where I would say someone is liable for the consequences of ethical behavior

And even more where someone is not liable for unethical behavior

user41796

@Air That's why Canada made a law stating that someone was not accepting liability for an accident by merely apologizing for the accident

Air

@GlenH7 Ah, that's interesting.

Leave it to Canada.

Sorry... #notsorry

user41796

bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/…

user41796

also related: kleinlyons.com/full-exposure/…

hazzey

Feb 12, 2015 22:32

Or like the "Good Samaritan" laws that say that you can't be held liable for trying to help save a life.

user41796

Yes, and some US states have made it possible for medical doctors to say they're sorry about something without that implying guilt or admitting something went wrong

Air

See, I want to point out that we're having a discussion here that contains within it some potentially great Q&As

Their natural scope is just less intuitive

user41796

more gratuitous links: amednews.com/article/20130520/profession/130529977/5

hazzey

@Air I'm not sure that any of these questions could be narrowed down enough to have a "correct" answer as the site requires.

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