Can a municipality be held liable for failing to identify a "major structural defect" in a building inspection?
Nova Scotia, Canada
The following excerpt is from Flynn v. HRM et al, 2003 NSSC 253 (CanLII):
The defendants say that even major structural defects will not draw liability “if they would not reasonably be detected by the inspection process as instituted by the Municipality...”. In Kirby v. Coquitlam (City) (1996), 37 M.P.L.R. (2d) 113 (B.C.S.C.), for instance, the plaintiff’s foundation was found to be deficient 30 years after construction. He sought his repair costs from the municipality, claiming that the original inspections should have revealed the defect. The court concluded that there was no negligence in the inspector’s failure to notice the presence of organic fill (paras. 29-30, 38).
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