joe ferry

Seller Isn’t Trying to Point Out Material Issues

My most recent post prompted a question on the LinkedIn ASHI Group Discussion Board from a Massachusetts Home Inspector who wanted to know whether a home inspector could rely on the information provided in the seller’s disclosures or on responses provided by either the seller or the seller’s representative to specific questions about the property.

I guess the easy answer is that, if seller’s disclosures were reliable, there would be no need for home inspections. And a seller’s disclosures could be unreliable for reasons that are completely unrelated to any skullduggery on his part, to his desire to hoodwink or inveigle a buyer. As an example, I have lived in my house for 24 years. If someone asked me what’s wrong with my house, I would have to say “I couldn’t tell you.”

Since I have no intention of selling the house, at least not before the Singularity occurs, issues that might be of considerable concern to a potential buyer never enter my head. And I imagine that most homeowners are as oblivious as I am of these matters and, thus, represent a huge market for pre-listing inspections.
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Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me

There’s a memorable scene in the Coen Brothers film Blood Simple where a character named Marty played by Dan Hedeya is trying to hire a private investigator played by Emmett Walsh to kill both his unfaithful wife and her lover. But Marty keeps beating around the bush about the nature of the engagement. Finally, Emmett Walsh drawls “Can you tell me what you want me to do or is it a secret?”

I am constantly being reminded of that scene whenever I read demand letters from attorneys that fail to make even a pretense of articulating any sort of legal theory of liability upon which a claim against the home inspector could possibly be based. You would be surprised how often that happens. In my experience, about fifteen percent of the time.

Recently, a home inspector in New England contacted me after having received a number of letters from an attorney over an inspection that he had conducted on a colonial era home. While the letters all seek damages in the low five figures, not a single one of them lets on what the inspector missed or what needs to be repaired. Just a demand for money.
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A Nation Of Gavones!

Once upon a time I had a paralegal who had been born in Italy but had come to America when she was a nine- or ten-year-old child. She had an Italian last name but was a totally assimilated American who spoke English fluently and unaccented. The only time she spoke Italian was when she spoke to her mother.

Since I had grown up in a neighborhood that comprised first-generation Irish, Germans and Italians, I gained an early appreciation of other cultures and took a particular shine to the Italian culture, its cuisine and language.
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Welcome To My World Redux

My last post prompted this response from a Florida Home Inspector:

Joe –

I also experience a claim wherein a buyer, who just so happened to be a litigation attorney, stated that there were damages to the roof in a specific location in the house he had just purchased, which we inspected.

He demanded that he be provided with our insurance company, policy #, phone number, and address of same. Did not want a phone call, a visit from us, or to discuss the matter whatsoever.

We had perfectly described the roof leak at the home he was purchasing, taken adequate photos and put them in the report, as well as described the faults to his face when he was there for the walkthrough at the end of the home inspection. We covered ourselves by putting in the disclaimers, some provided by InterNachi lawyers, and some we have put in over the years, something to the effect of “recommend further evaluation by State of Florida licensed roofing contractor”, etc.
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Welcome To My World

A home inspector whom I have known for a couple of years came up to me at Ken Compton’s recent Workshop in Naples, Florida and said “I have to run something by you.”

He had gotten a demand letter from a local attorney seeking damages for alleged failure to detect mold. Not surprisingly, the underlying facts are ridiculous. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that mold detection is excluded from every extant industry Standard of Practice and was not part of this inspection, the mold was discovered only after destructive probing secondary to some remodeling that the claimants were undertaking.

The inspector tried to explain to the claimants’ attorney why there was no case but was unsuccessful in doing so and subsequently reported the matter to his insurance company which appointed a local law firm that specializes in insurance defense to represent the inspector.
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Comment Sense

A recent republication of an archival post about why home inspection claims always fail prompted this comment from Iowa home inspector John Mauch.

So, why should we carry insurance? Fortunately I have not had a claim and know several inspectors [who do not] carry insurance for the reasons you already stated.

While most claims against home inspectors – and by “most”, I mean 99 percent – have no validity, they still need to be defended. If no suit has been filed, I can generally – 97 percent of the time – get rid of the claim with a responsive letter that compellingly outlines all the reasons why the claim is not valid and why it would be foolish for the claimant to pursue it.

But there are a substantial number of cases that begin life as a lawsuit. That is, there has been no prior indication that there was even a problem with the inspection. With those cases, I have only been successful at terminating them about half of the time and it can take weeks, even months before plaintiff’s counsel eventually files a voluntary dismissal.
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Still Waiting

A lot of home inspectors are surprised, nay, astonished when I tell them that I almost never see a home inspection claim that is legitimate. But it is true. It will be five years this Thanksgiving Day since I started squashing these ridiculous claims. Almost 300 claims later, I have still seen only 3 claims that had any merit.

And since I launched this website, they are coming out of the woodwork. Claims, that is. Not legitimate ones. Last week, I took a five-day trip out west to visit my good friend, Nick Gromicko, and speak to inspectors attending the Fall Conference of the American Institute of Inspectors.
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In Your Deposition, Be Frank, Not a Weiner

As someone who writes on a regular schedule – every Monday and Thursday – I often never know what I will write about until the deadline becomes an almost palpable looming presence. The hardest part for me is actually selecting a topic. Once I have done that, the post almost writes itself. Fortunately, current events often have a way of suggesting topics for me. So, thank you Anthony Weiner.

In the home inspector training at the Law and Disorder Seminar, I spend a good amount of time on the legal process. Part of that is spent on the Discovery phase of a lawsuit which is when parties “discover” what evidence the other parties intend to present in order to prove their claims or defenses and one of the most productive discovery devices is the deposition.

Lawyers take depositions, which are interrogations of witnesses, taken under oath and recorded by a court reporter, for three distinct reasons. The first reason is to lock the witness into his story so that he doesn’t tell a different story at trial or, if he does change his testimony at trial, so that the lawyer can use the witness’s prior inconsistent testimony to impeach his credibility. The second reason is to ascertain the witness’s credibility. Does this witness tell a story that is believable? The third reason is to ascertain the witness’s likability. Is this witness someone whom a jury is going to like and – more importantly – give money to? Or if the witness is a defendant, is she a witness that a jury will be reluctant to hold culpable?
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Should You Refuse To Do A Home Inspection For An Attorney?

That’s the title of a discussion I ran across on one of the many Home Inspection Group Forums on LinkedIn. The difference of opinion and experience expressed by inspectors who responded to the query was all over the map.

One inspector who has never refused to perform an inspection for a lawyer has never had a lawyer client so much as glance at the inspection agreement before signing it. A second inspector had a couple who were both lawyers crossing out clauses in the contract that they could not abide. The inspector stood his ground and, when the lawyers also refused to budge, he walked.

Another respondent actually likes working with lawyers because, he says, they understand the need for limitations and are generally thoroughly impressed with the comprehensiveness of his work product, notwithstanding those limitations. And, he added, you can’t overlook the marketing value of having a satisfied client whose endorsement is likely to carry considerable weight.
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Happy Anniversary!

As hard as it is for me to believe, today marks the first anniversary of this website. One year ago, at the urging of my very young, very talented and very savvy internet media advisors, I took a giant leap of faith and launched this website which is dedicated to providing home inspectors with timely, accurate and useful content and commentary on the myriad of issues that arise where their home inspection businesses intersect with our legal system.

As a serial entrepreneur, I am accustomed to launching new enterprises. And though I am always almost pollyannishly optimistic about their prospects, the truth is that you never really know how successful any new venture is going to be. Especially one that’s entirely dependent on generating fresh content twice a week, week in and week out.

As it happens, my faithful home inspector readership, their often quite delusional clients, the alphabet soup of national and regional home inspection associations, state home inspection licensing boards and the often suicidal professional liability insurers that serve the industry are an evergreen source of new material.
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