Court Opinion

ID: 9565008
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:13:01.722359+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:18.701450
License: Public Domain

Utter, J. —
I concur with much of the majority opinion. It reflects verbatim in many areas views I have previously expressed to this court. The majority, however, unnecessarily complicates what should be a straightforward analysis of the concept of duty and its applicability in these cases. There is no need to use the public duty doctrine when there is no duty at all. The basic question is simple: whose duty is it to ensure that construction projects meet the standards of a local building code, the builder or the government? When we conclude there is no duty on the part of the *173County then it follows that the duty of compliance is on the shoulders of the builder alone.
The majority reaches the same conclusion but only after additional and unnecessary steps involving the public duty doctrine (i.e., that a duty to the public in general is a duty to no one in particular). The majority must first conclude that the County's duties in issuing the permits and inspecting the premises were of a public nature only. Next, the majority must find that the legislative intent exception does not apply in this instance, even though the statutory language that enabled us to find such legislative intent in Halvorson v. Dahl, 89 Wn.2d 673, 676, 574 P.2d 1190 (1978), is virtually indistinguishable from the language of the State Building Code Act involved here.
Next, the majority must find that there is no "special relationship" exception applicable in this case. In addressing this question, the consistency of the majority opinion breaks down. The public duty analysis is suddenly dropped and the discussion of "special relationship" becomes instead an analysis of the traditional tort concept of duty. It is far from clear whether the majority means to find no County liability here because there is no "special relationship" or whether it means to find no liability because the County had no duty to verify building code compliance.
I would reach the same result by directly reaffirming the traditional rule that it is the duty of a builder not the government to ensure that his work complies with the building codes.
Pearson, C.J., and Brachtenbach, J., concur with Utter, J.