Tennessee Home Inspection Report; please review

[David A. Andersen]

Unfortunately, an inspector is forced to cover himself. Naturally, the best defense is a thorough inspection,

what do you mean by covering yourself?

I hope you don't mean to put all kinds of disclaimers in your report.
As you stated below, nobody pays attention to all that stuff anyway. They Sue you regardless.

but California lawyers, for example, don't care what the SOP says! They file anyway [and the inspector's E&O funds the suit]. Then the E&O company throws the inspector under the bus, writes a check, bills the inspector for the "deductible" and raises the inspector's rates, when it's a totally frivolous case. It shouldn't make it past "motion to dismiss" but does.

I went through the same thing many years ago.
No insurance for E&O was required at the time. No state law in place at the time, however I was utilizing the exact version SOP that the state adopted and put in place while my lawsuit was underway. Over the years, we finally got to the courtroom. The Judge asked if we discussed the issues between parties, plaintiff said no. The judge threw them out and ordered them to mediate utilizing the court clerk.

When all is said and done, everything that they complained about me (others were also involved of course) was actually written in the report. There were two reports because the inspection could not be completed the first time around due to significant deficiencies. The plaintiff's lawyer never even had the second inspection report it spent years in disclosure and investigating refusing to talk about solving the situation only to get to the court without all the facts (she also didn't bring her client on the day of reckoning! Didn't think it was necessary!?).

I chipped in $5000 along with everyone else (who didn't think they were at all to blame in this case). The termite inspection company produced an out of court settlement specifically stating what repairs would be done with our money and screwed the client in the process They signed away any recourse against any of the parties in the process. When they opened the wall to repair hidden termite damage, there was more to be done than what they contracted for. Oh well!

As far as throwing the inspector under the bus; this whole business is not about who's right and who's wrong rather how are we going to settle at the lowest cost. Ultimately this was my deciding factor in shelling out $5000 to make this go away because my attorneys fees would be twice that before we showed up in court again. Though you get pissed off because you know you were right in the first place, the whole process has nothing to do with that. Though you may feel your insurance company is screwing you, it is not good practice on their part to fight for something that cost them more money in the long run. Depending on how much your rates go up (if they do it all) (some of this is old wives tales) is probably the only screwing you get by the insurance company. However, my insurance goes down year-by-year with a clean record. When you get your insurance company involved in a squabble that cost them money, why do you feel you should continue to get discounted rates? So if they go up a little bit, that's the cost of doing business.

It's funny how home inspectors will do the same thing and feel that they are "justified"!

[James E. Braun, CMI]

I am with David and Wilson, keep your report simple. The more crap you put in your report, the more ammo the other side has and less the client gets confused about things. I make sure all my clients get a copy of the SOP before the contract is signed. The SOP is the disclaimer.