DP6

DecisionPoint
http://proethica.org/ontology/cases#DecisionPoint

DP6

Should Engineer A treat his post-sale status and the non-imminent character of the risk as factors that limit his safety reporting obligation to a single good-faith notification, or does his unique original-designer epistemic authority create a persistent, escalating duty to act regardless of the absence of a client relationship?

Engineer A designed and built the barn as the property owner, then sold it to Jones. After the sale, with no current client relationship, contractual tie, or professional engagement with the property, Engineer A learned of a structural modification that he — as the original designer — uniquely recognized as creating a snow-load collapse risk. The threshold question is whether Engineer A's post-sale status as a private individual without a client relationship preserves, diminishes, or heightens his ethical duty to act on this structural safety concern, and whether the non-imminent character of the risk (compared to the imminent bridge collapse in BER 00-5) calibrates the scope of that duty.

Treat the original-designer epistemic authority as creating a continuing, escalating ethical obligation that survives the property sale and the absence of a client relationship, requiring written notification to Jones and the town supervisor, followed by escalation to higher authorities upon inaction — calibrated in pace to the non-imminent risk but not terminated by a single unproductive verbal contact.

Treat the post-sale status and non-imminent risk character as factors that limit the ethical obligation to a single good-faith notification to the highest available municipal authority, on the grounds that Engineer A has no ongoing professional relationship with the property, the risk is contingent rather than imminent, and the regulatory system bears responsibility for follow-through once notified.

Treat the structural analogy to BER 00-5 — non-engineer inaction in the face of a structural safety concern — as the dominant ethical variable, requiring immediate multi-authority escalation to county and state building officials simultaneously with or immediately after the initial notification, without waiting for a graduated sequential response, on the grounds that the non-engineer town supervisor's inaction is structurally identical to the non-engineer override found ethically impermissible in BER 00-5.

Engineer A