That has nothing to do with what I have written. Excuses are hollowed out by the facts. Two simple questions by the judge would have cleared it up. The inspector made a claim of a violation and the owner didn't argue the point and relied on a sketchy violation instead. The owner won on a technicality which is good enough for the crowd here.
That has
everything to do with what you wrote.
It is NOT the judge's responsibility to ensure the applicant has suitable evidence: that's the lawyer's job (or the building official.)
Lacking evidence, it it entirely possible that the alleged safety violations were, in fact, specious.
- The inspector might have applied commercial guard heights to an area that was, in fact, residential.
- The "stove looks dangerous" might well have been a modern CSA-approved stove that was compliant to code and CSA B365. This would have required the official to actually look at the clearance requirements for the stove, and document same. To drive this home, I have a stove that in its current configuration, needs only three inches of clearance from a combustible rear wall. [The wall is, in fact, 6" of noncombustible stonemasonry, but....]
Here's the other angle: juts because a building inspector says its wrong, doesn't mean its wrong. We have just dealt with an application where the contractor was told by a building inspector that the garage in a single-family dwelling had to be fire-rated. This inspector *constantly* tells people this, as if it is fact.
9.10.9.18. Separation of Storage Garages
3) Where a storage garage serves only the dwelling unit to which it is attached or in which it is built, it shall be considered as part of that dwelling unit and the fire separation required in Sentence (2) need not be provided between the garage and the dwelling unit.
In this case, the mere word or "opinion" of the building inspector is completely wrong. This is why the Code references were vital.
