Liability
Liability
That is the only word I can use to stress the question in this thread.
Ok I'm going to start with the fact that Indiana has removed 210.12 from our code book, so we here do have an out, that removal by our legislation put the ball back into their court as far as liability for us here.
With that said no where in state of Indiana can I "not use" the requirements set forth by Indiana adopted requirements set into law, even if there is no inspection permits or licenses, its called self law and liability is what rules it.
The first thing I would do is find out what is required at state level, county level and or local level if such applies, then let this be your guide as to how you perform your job, anything less is opening yourself up to a liability that can even cause you to be charged criminally if you do something with the intent to avoid the extra cost of doing it safely, a good insurance lawyer will eat you up in court and it is not something you ever want to go through, I have sat in on a few cases and one of them was for a company I worked for, we beat some of it but it still cost the company's insurance thousands of dollars in the end and higher premium insurance cost, all because one of our guys didn't do his home work and map out the circuits he was using and didn't realize they were double fed from two breakers on the same phase, and it caused a fire, lucky no one was hurt or killed but the house was a total loss, not at first but after a second fire which we proved was a second non-associated fire not cause by the first, this limited our liability to just the damage cause by the first fire, but it doesn't matter there should have been no fire!!! if that person had done his home work.
Well there it is, this is what you need to determine if doing this work will cause you to put your company and or you in jeopardy if a fire were to happen and someone is hurt of killed and your state or county requires AFCI's and a sharp insurance lawyer could use this against you in a court of law?
We need to think this way when we are doing our work, we are in a trade that when we don't follow the rules people can be hurt or killed, and we can be held accountable and yes even criminally, we get threads on here from time to time of reports of electricians going to prison, three in Florida and one in Connecticut, Florida was over widow-maker hook up of generators after hurricane Charily, and Connecticut was where an electrician hooked up a 120 volt wall heater to 240 volts with out double checking what was sent to him.
Sorry for the rant but I try to get people to understand that there is a self governing rule of liability that each and everyone of us needs to always keep in mind in our line of work, and remember there is no such thing as signing off on liability, the judge will laugh at you if you even try to say "well the GC told me to do it" it will not matter one iota, because you are considered the person who is supposed to know better.
Edited to add:
I want you to also know that even if your behind a corporation the person doing the work can be liable and can be sued, corporations only protects those (owners) from liability of their workers from someone coming after the owners personal assets but the worker who did the unsafe work is open to liability, both civil and criminally this can vary from state to state but if you don't put yourself in a situation like this you wont have to worry.
