You wouldn’t suspect it from looking at her. She’s pretty old, in her early fifties at least and inflicted with a constant need to shift eyes, lips and hands. She comes across as harried, constantly on the brink of a major breakdown and pretty lost; I don’t blame her, having seen and spoken to some of her clients/tenants. Maybe it’s a typically asian trait, but the tenants I’ve seen think nothing of harassing the management, as if paying rent has made the right to be an ass inherent and divine. You could see, however, that she had been beautiful in her youth (I wonder why I made that observation).
“So, if I hire contractor A to do maintenance, and in the course of doing work for somebody else in my building, contractor A fouls up, aren’t I vicariously responsible since, if the cause of the damage was due to a blockage, and I hire contractor A to do my maintenance, shouldn’t contractor A be held liable for incompetence?” she fires the whole salvo at me.
I blinked, my jaws tried to work and I saw her in a completely new light.
“And if contractor A is liable for being incompetent, then aren’t I liable because I have a duty of care to hire a competent contractor?” she continued, gifting me with a big, wide smile showing all her teeth undulled by age, and ruddy gums drawn back, no doubt, from constant worry.
It sounded suspiciously like the legalese I had discussed with my superiors, not 20 minutes before the meeting.
She laid out my entire case for me as I sat there, dumbfounded. “Well, yes, that’s true, but you’ve got to consider the cause of the damage in the first place,” I say, looking for room to stand. I barely regained my composure before she asked “Why”.
I knew it depended on several factors. First, we needed to understand the scope of duties for which contractor A was hired. What would ‘maintenance’ entail? And, secondly, with specific reference to the cause of the damage, it wouldn’t be enough to conclude that contractor A was at fault, since the fault could’ve been completely accidental.
Even if it was accidental, the burden of proof would still be on her to show that the cause was not accidental but as a result of some negligence on contractor A’s part. And that would be doubly hard to prove, because she would have to show that it would’ve been possible to detect a blockage in pipes that were, essentially, under pressure, and to do that without triggering the flow sensor switches (how else would one detect a blockage?).
Or, again, if the contractor was really at fault by not conducting the drainage properly, then it would in no way impact on her culpability, because the contractor was performing works for another principal.
I was dizzy 20 minutes ago while laying out the possibilities of the case, knowing that I lacked facts and information that would, eventually, be very difficult to obtain.
So I tried sleight of hand.
“It’s not all finalized yet, Ms. B,” I said, flashing my most winning smile.
“But you admit it’s a possibility?” she pressed; she wouldn’t give up!
“Yes, I considered the possibility, true; your argument works if and only if it can be shown that the accident,” here I stressed the word, “could be proved to track all the way back to some negligence on contractor A’s part,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“If the pipes were not drained sufficiently, or drained improperly, it would be contractor A’s fault, yes, but then you won’t be able to fault contractor A for performing poor maintenance for you, in which case-”
“In which case, I cannot be held to be in any way responsible for the damage?” she asked.
“Well, not under the specific terms and conditions of your agreement with your tenant,” I finished, shrugging for effect.
It’s been almost 3 weeks now since water overflowed, and the time in between had been spent running from one fire to another. I left after pleasantries were exchanged, realizing the amount of shit I still had to do. To date, it’s the most interesting case I’ve had to deal with, I remember thinking.
I wonder what she’ll come up with, next.
