A few weeks ago, I posted on facebook a photograph that I took of some home inspectors who were attending a home inspector training Law and Disorder Seminar – seminarians? – that I conducted in Schaumburg, Illinois about 3 years ago. One comment that the photo engendered was: “inspector average age = 102 years.”
Not exactly, but I do not think that anyone would quarrel with the observation that the profession skews somewhat older than, say, Starbucks baristas, notwithstanding that there has always been a steady influx of young turks embarking on their second-career after mustering out of the Armed Forces or being downsized out of earlier careers. I would put the median age of my seminarians right around 50.
Most home inspectors whose age is above that median can remember a time in America when folks did not run off to the Court House for every little thing. Or even a lot of big things.
Before I was born, one of my older brothers got hit by a car right in front of our house when he was about 8 or 9 and sustained a broken arm. The car that hit him was owned by Acme Markets, a huge supermarket chain in Philadelphia, and the driver was on company business at the time. So my parents could have sought compensation not only from the driver but from Acme, as well, under the Respondeat Superior Doctrine discussed elsewhere on this site.
But I don’t think that that thought ever entered my parents’ minds. Knowing my father, I would be shocked to learn that my brother, whose Indian name back then would have been Needs A Smack, did not get a Force Ten level scolding for his part in this incident.
My parents’ attitude – and back then, the prevailing attitude in the culture-at-large, actually – was “Hey, if you don’t want to get hit by a car, here’s what you do: Stay out of the street!” Additionally, my father, an immigrant carpenter with six sons under the age of 12 at the time, more than likely did not want to see the driver, someone with whom he would undoubtedly have felt a working-class solidarity, get in dutch with his employer on his account, something that filing a personal injury claim would doubtless assure.
So they sucked it up, got my brother’s arm bone knit back together, told him to “let that be a lesson to you”, and moved on with their lives. And never mentioned it again. I only know about it because one of my other brothers told me about it some 25 years later. With seven sons and the country continuously at war, I guess that my parents must have had other things on their minds.
But that quaint era ended after my generation got itself so surpassingly over-indulged, over-educated, and way over-sensitized to minor affronts that previous generations would ignore if they even noticed them at all and proceeded to sissify the American can-do cultural identity that foreordained our victories over Japan and the Axis powers in World War II into a new “can-sue” identity that a far too large contemporary collection of whiny wusses have enthusiastically embraced.
As a consequence of that, any time a system in a house that you have inspected draws its final breath, expect a call.
Already a ClaimsAcademy Member? Log In
Register for Joe’s FREE ClaimsAcademy Video Tips
Protect Yourself with ClaimIntercept
Joe’s Law and Disorder Seminar is Available Online!