DP2

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

DP2

When the attorney instructs Engineer A to maintain confidentiality over the structural safety findings, should Engineer A passively comply and continue the engagement, insist on disclosure as a condition of continued engagement and withdraw if refused, or immediately withdraw without insisting on remedial action?

Upon receiving the attorney's confidentiality instruction after reporting the structural findings, Engineer A must decide whether to passively comply and continue the engagement, or to first insist — as a condition of continued engagement — that the attorney disclose the structural defects to the court or tenants, and if refused, to withdraw and independently notify affected parties. This decision point concerns whether Engineer A exhausted the intermediate remedies required by the BER 84-5 insistence-then-withdrawal framework before the situation reached the point of unilateral disclosure.

Condition continued engagement on the attorney's agreement to disclose the structural defects to the court or the tenants; if the attorney refuses, withdraw from the engagement and independently notify the tenants and public authorities of the imminent structural danger, following the BER 84-5 insistence-then-withdrawal sequence as the ethically required graduated response.

Accept the attorney's confidentiality instruction as a binding professional constraint, continue the forensic expert engagement without insisting on disclosure or withdrawing, and defer to the litigation process to eventually surface the structural safety issues — on the ground that the attorney's legal expertise and the active judicial proceeding provide an adequate institutional mechanism for addressing the safety concern.

Immediately withdraw from the forensic expert engagement upon receiving the confidentiality instruction — thereby eliminating ongoing complicity in suppression — but take no further affirmative action to notify tenants or public authorities, on the ground that withdrawal removes the engineer from the client relationship and that the litigation process, now without Engineer A's participation, will independently address the safety findings.

Engineer A