At the risk of jumping the gun based on just this article; what an idiot! If you're going to be a dirty engineer then at least be smart about it. If you're looking to file a false report about someones garden retaining wall you're probably going to get away with it and not kill anyone. If you're hired to look at a brick facade of a multi story building over a highly traveled public sidewalk WHY WOULD YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH THAT WITHOUT SOMEONE GETTING HURT?!

Gah! Glad they arrested and charged him, this should be a great example to hold up to persuade any other engineers thinking about cheating the system to play by the rules the rest of us follow.

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com

Another article with more information: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/esplanade-engineer-charged-bricks-killed-2-year-old-article-1.2437701

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com

Tragic.

If the engineer truly didn't visit the building and simply manufactured his report then that is certainly a bad deal - and an arrest sounds appropriate.

But it made me wonder about the city officials. They were also warned about nasty cracks and didn't respond and yet they are not arrested.

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JAE: The city officials probably have governmental immunity so they (generally) don't have to worry about liability. The P.E. on the other hand...

"gov't immunity" that's my point.
Why are they immune from anything when they are just as culpable and guilty of gross negligence?

I understand the reason for having government immunity but ignoring warning emails like that is pretty extreme.

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I'd actually side with the bureaucracy for once on this one. It sounds a lot like they're heavily overworked and that the law drafted in the 70's requiring these reports and the system they use to handle it needs to be overhauled to stop these things from falling through the cracks. Obviously it's a shame that a kid had to die for this to come to light but, in the end, sometimes that's what it takes to fix the system. I'd say they're certainly going to need to be required to fix their end of the system but, in the end, the engineer assumed the liability and got burned because he didn't supposedly do the job. It should stop there otherwise we would need to spend way too much money getting permits if the government was held liable for another persons screw-ups.

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com

While it's pretty obvious that writing an inspection report to certify something you've never seen is a pretty bad idea ...

... it seems rather likely that regardless of what that 2011 inspection report said, the condition of the building could very well have deteriorated in the subsequent three years to the time of the unfortunate accident.

Saying that something is "safe", without any qualifying statements, is a dangerous statement to make.

"Governmental immunity"? So does that mean they can just choose whether or not to do their job? Fine state of affairs that is.

Yep, same situation here. Government representatives are free to overlook things with impunity.

Next time you pass a cop car while travelling one or two km/h above the posted speed limit, you may consider that to be a good thing.

When building inspectors fail to do their jobs despite having been notified of a problem, not so much.

Even governmental immunity has its limits. If it can be shown that there was negligence involved in the government's actions, the immunity can be revoked.

coloeng - I think you are correct but I'm not sure of the fine legal arguments and precedents involved. I'm sure there are some cases where gov't employees have lost their immunity for gross negligence or other very bad behavior. In this case with a lack of follow through on a warning sent in to them I'm not sure how exposed they might be to prosecution or civil lawsuits.

If I was the parent of the little girl who was killed I'd certainly want two things - the truly responsible parties held, well, responsible and second, some changes in the system to avoid other little girls getting killed by bricks.

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Local and city officials supposedly do not have any sovereign immunity, hence, the myriad civil lawsuits involving police misconduct. Only the US government and the states are immune.

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The article did say that the actions of the building officials were being investigated.

I wish that it would be criminal to use other people's stamps or falsely claim to be a PE. That is one of the most common violations I see aside from not keeping up to date on firm registration or PHD hours when I go through the boards newsletters. Most of the time they just get hit with a few thousand dollar penalty and a cease and desist. The fine is hardly a deterrent for anything just due to how much it would have cost them to actually have a PE on staff. There was a pretty decent sized electrical company in Dallas that got busted recently for the president falsely stamping fifteen projects. The fine was $45,000 which was way more than normal but I don't think you can find a PE that will work for 6 months for that much money.

Completely agree Hamburger, I wonder why we don't see much more of it. The penalties are so low that it might actually make more sense then hiring an engineer for many companies. Super unethical and will eventually turn and bite you, but if a business was already in the red I could see them considering it worth it. I bet the only reason we don't see more of it is people don't actually know how small the penalty is.

Professional and Structural Engineer (ME, NH)
American Concrete Industries
www.americanconcrete.com

A good lawyer can "pierce the vail" of sovereign immunity in special cases. This sounds like one of those.

But will they ... if they can just blame an outdated, if perhaps improper, report from a private engineer??

A lawyer in a civil suit, e.g. the parents of the child who was killed, will sue anyone with money or good insurance. So I think the city would be a more attractive target than an disgraced engineer.

Maybe the guy is a scumbag and deserves to be thrown in the clink and have the key tossed in a outhouse.
But I'd like to get his side of the story, no lawyers, over a beer.
There was a highly publicized case in Las Vegas where a very good, honest engineer had his license suspended for a violation. I knew the guy, and even without talking to him it seems like a railroad. There was a lot of politics involved and someone had to be hung.

Wonder what the guy's insurance (assuming he has some) would do about this. Don't think ours would be very happy with us labeling things as 'safe'. Though if it's a standard form with only a select few options there may be leniency.

And on 'governmental immunity', the PEs that work for the city may not have to worry about being liable for this. But if it's determined that the building department had a duty to do something and didn't, the building department or city could certainly be deemed liable. If I'm filing a civil suit, I want to go after them instead of the individuals anyways. They've got bigger pockets.

BrianPetersen---they will chase the deeper pockets. The engineer (like all of us!) will have limited resources. He probably has professional liability insurance, but those are declining limit coverages....meaning that his defense costs come out of his insurance limits. I worked on one a few years back where the engineer was clearly at fault, had a professional liability policy coverage of $1,000,000 and when his lawyer got finished "defending" him, there was only about $400,000 left for the damaged party. They got that, but their damages were about $4.5 million (construction defect case).

So if an attorney can get past the sovereign immunity issue because of their negligence, the "public" has a much deeper pocket than the engineer. The property owner also likely has a lot more coverage than the engineer, so they will look hard in that direction as well. They won't ignore any of them, but they will try to weave the entanglements such that they get the most return.

Just a thought: I think it is all and well for us to want to find culpability with the city/government/etc. especially considering how they sometimes make our lives as engineers a royal pain. However, as a taxpayer, I'm not so sure I'd be willing to lower the threshold to liability to the gov't for incompetent city inspectors.....just saying.

As a taxpayer, I am rather interested in having the public officials actually do the jobs that I am paying them for, instead of being useless and doing nothing while still getting paid.

If that means occasionally an incompetent public official has to be whipped in order to improve compliance of the rest ... so be it.

Brian, your alternate universe sounds like a great place. You and your star should let us know how y'all plan to place a majority of competent people in the government and I'll subscribe. Allowing the public to sue the pants off the public is not the answer. Who would work for the gov't if they were held to the same standard as private sector work? Nobody would, that's who. I'm still not convinced that my tax dollars should be open to a lower threshold for liability. If you think McDonalds and Walmart get sued for stupid stuff, imagine how much your taxes would increase if you had it your way. Do you really think it would only be the occasional guy getting whipped? As an engineer, I try to solve problems in the real world, not the imaginary fairy tale of how things "should be".

Now, this question doesn't apply if you don't actually visit the site...

But, what is the scope of the required NYC inspections? In another large city, the engineer only needs to review a portion (perhaps only one drop per side on a highrise) of the façade during each review period. Does NYC require that 100% of the façade be observed per inspection?

I say this, because it's not out of the realm that an isolated window sill make it through periodic inspections...and lead to a failure. Although, where there is one there are usually several.

And you have to visit the site to see them.

Shame.

"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us." -WSC

Sovereign and public official immunities are a means of protecting the taxpayer's monies, and to bar marginal lawsuits against an obvious DEEP pocket.

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