liability
studying for the contractor’s license exam has been pretty grueling, with many hours spent trying to cram into my cranium pieces of arcane info regarding tax laws, employment regulations, accounting practices, contract forms, and so on. ug.
while reading up on liability and how a general contractor is responsible when a subcontractor screws up, i flashed back about 4 years to a very big cringe moment, early in my wiring and custom installation biz. it was before i was on my own, before i was able to gear my work just to non-profits, i was working with a small company in marin which did mostly big home theater jobs for SF and marin’s silly-rich, but also some phone and computer network jobs. i was at a jobsite, a 4-story victorian in SF doing some rather gnarly high-scaffold work, running big wire for phone service up four stories, then running it into an attic space that was being remodeled. well, once i got the wire up the side of the building, we started feeding it into the attic space through a small hole in the wall. mind you, the attic was in process and there were, like, 5 different contractors reading plans, walking around trying to figure out where to install this or that, where to place a wall or door, etc… there were plenty of spots where there was no flooring yet, just joists and below that, the lath-and-plaster ceiling of the rooms downstairs. this included, of course, where we had to pull in the wire.
so, as i alerted my co-installer, we had to be super careful to step on only the joists, or risk cracking or busting the ceiling, which of course was not weight-supporting. co-installer says, “wow! yeah, thanks for pointing that out, i would have probably just walked right through that!” what happens next? oy! i turn around to get a tool, and step on a joist where some plumbers have left a damp extension cord running right across it. i slip, lose my balance and fall right through the ceiling down into the formal dressing room where the client is packing, getting ready for a trip to europe or something. having cut and bruised myself up quite a bit, and having just barely caught myself on a joist so i was literally hanging 3/4 down into the room from their ceiling, in a sort of shock, all i could muster was, “nngh, uh, sorry!” client: “sorry?!!”
of course, i was totally mortified and also quite pissed off at the same time. with some help i managed to get back up into the attic and get cleaned up and was told to go ahead and take the rest of the day off. the bossman was worried about insurance, of course, but was fairly decent about the whole thing. one of my co-workers, a good pal, ended up being brought in to fix the hole and do the rest of the wire pull. the next day at work, he brought one of the turn-of-the-century nails used in the lath and plaster i went through as a little souvenir.
i’ve still got that nail on my dresser. every now an then i pick it up and think about liability. and luck!
