most building departments require that the original contractor be notified that a second permit is being applied for his job. and this is good for us electrical contractors. i have been involved in a few of these jobs and have asked the electrical inspector for a job site meeting with the owner in attendance before proceeding with the work. that way he knows what condition the job was in when you took it over and get's you started on the right foot with the owner too. i have always contacted the other contractor before agreeing to take the job over. most of the time it was a mutual agreement -- the owner and the contractor couldn't get along --mostly because of job progress.... some guys just can't turn a job down even when they know they can't handle it???
we had one job that we were underbid by the other contractor-- our bid 130k, his 95k ? after the job was C.O.'ed by the city, the customer started having all kinds of problems-- the gc call us to check this other guy's work --- we came in with six guys after hours and opened things up. in four hours we documented over 200 code violations. the owner was an attorney and after our inspection we had a meeting, he asked me "bottom line, what the verdict?" --- i told him "you got what you paid for!". he agreed to have the repairs done T&M and much of it after hours since they had occupied the space and couldn't move. they recovered 30k from the original contractor and it cost him an additional 32k to make it right. and this job was inspected and signed off!!! couldn't believe it!!!
