Why “Up to Code” Can Be a Weak Defense After a Disaster
A building being “up to code” doesn’t automatically mean it was safe—or that code compliance is a complete defense after a disaster. In this episode of Legal Owl, host John speaks with fire protection engineer and legal expert Benjamin Casey about how fire, explosion, and life-safety cases can turn on the gap between minimum code requirements and what a facility should have been designed to withstand.
Benjamin brings together experience in fire protection engineering, physical security, and resilience analysis. He explains how performance-based analysis and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling can help reconstruct what happened, and why the cause of a fire may not be the only question that matters. In some cases, the focus shifts to whether the building contained the fire, alerted occupants, and allowed them to get out safely.The conversation explores:
Why meeting code may not be enough to establish an appropriate standard of care
How fire and egress models can help explain complex events in litigation
Why evidence destruction can make cause-and-origin analysis less central
How locked doors and security decisions can complicate fire liability
The challenges of explaining technical evidence to juries
Why a single overlooked detail—like whether alarms were working—can shape a case
How resilience analysis applies to emerging hazards, including lithium-ion batteries
Benjamin also discusses the historical events behind modern fire-safety requirements and how engineers and attorneys can assess risk when regulations haven’t kept pace with new technologies or unique facilities.
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