Let's clear up a few things about the legal system and liability. I'm tired of the same old canards being passed around, like a Christmas fruitcake gone bad.
As desirable as a predictable legal system may be, ours is less predictable by the day. Not only can someone be sued for anything, they often are- and there are enough goofy judgements out there that the outcome is never certain.
UL gets sued all the time ... and it's pretty rare for them to remain on the suit after the first exchange of motions. UL's listing, UL will happily assert, doesn't mean a damn thing for any specific widget, and they quite happily assert they have absolutely no responsibility for anything. Instead, UL will claim that the UL mark only means that the manufacturer submitted a sample that probably passed testing and was thought to comply with their standards on that particular day, by folks who might have erred.
A little different from what UL's marketing makes you think. Remember this: advertising claims have zero meaning.
All the UL sticker does is give the AHJ an excuse to be lazy, to avoid doing his job. In effect, the AHJ says "well, someone else thought about this, so i can be lazy and just assume they guessed right." It doesn't change that the AHJ is still the AHJ.
We find this concept perverted every code cycle, where the various lobbyists show up in the AHJ's office and say 'how dare you modify / amend / edit our wonderful model code, when the real experts have just decided that this is how it should be? You'll be liable ...'
Well, here's a news flash - you're liable, no matter what. That's who the AHJ is. That's his job. The NFPA isn't going to pay the judgement.
Not that there's much liability; AHJ's already have legislation protecting them from any personal responsibility. I build a house that burns down, I'm the guy who gets bankrupted and ridiculed and loses his means of earning a living (license). You inspect and the place falls down, YOU say "oh well" and the government you work for takes things from there.
Your only role is to point at a stack of papers and insist to your fellow government dweebs that your tail is covered, it was someone else's fault. That UL label is the first thing you hide behind.
Which is really ironic, since the other impulse of government is to get ever more involved in ever more minute details. Absolute authority, zero accountability.
