Legal Update – Recent Court DecisionsIngles v. Tutkaluk
Supreme Court of Canada (2000)
• local government liability for negligent building inspection
“It is clear, that once a government agency makes a policy decision to inspect, in certain circumstances, it owes a duty of care to all who may be injured by the negligent implementation of that policy;”
“While I have stated above that a government agency will not be liable for those decisions made at the policy level, I must emphasize that, where inspection is provided for by statute, a government agency cannot immunize itself from liability by simply making a policy decision never to inspect.”
“To avoid liability, the government agency must exercise the standard of care in its inspection that would be expected of an ordinary, reasonable and prudent person in the same circumstances. … the measure of what is reasonable in the circumstances will depend on a variety of factors, including the likelihood of a known or foreseeable harm, the gravity of that harm and the burden or cost which would be incurred to prevent the injury. … While the municipal inspector will not be expected to discover every latent defect in a project, or every derogation from the building code standards, it will be liable for those defects that it could reasonably be expected to have detected and to have ordered remedied;”
• this case was applied in the recent Delta case: Owners, Strata Plan NW3341 v. Canlan Ice Sports Corporation and the Corporation of Delta, B.C. Supreme Court (2001)
