Lawyers will square off Monday in a suit involving allegations of faulty home construction by local building contractors and negligence by county building inspectors in approving the work.

Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Burley Mitchell, now a member of the Womble Carlyle Sandridge and Rice law firm in Raleigh, represents the county. He will face Thomas M. Van Camp, the attorney for a Moore County couple suing the building contractors and the county.

Jeff and Christi Dotson and their three children are now living in a rented house because they were being made ill by conditions in their new home in Beacon Ridge, Van Camp charged in an interview with The Pilot earlier this week.

“They were all getting sick,” Van Camp said. “They opened a wall and there was so much moisture and rot that the build-up of spores and bacteria were causing their illness.”

But the purpose of the hearing at 10 a.m. Monday before Superior Court Judge W. Douglas Albright is a request by Mitchell that the suit be dismissed against the county.

Mitchell is expected to argue that the county is not liable under the Governmental Immunity law, which covers acts of certain local government employees. The law has been interpreted to mean that a local government that carries liability insurance, which Moore County carries, waives immunity and can be sued.

Van Camp says that the county’s defense in this regard can be traced to an argument in another case by Moore County attorney Bruce Cunningham before the N.C. Supreme Court last year.

That decision, written by another former chief justice, Henry Frye, more or less threw out an expansion of the Public Duty Doctrine ruling previously made by the state Court of Appeals.

The matter is a complex one, Van Camp said.

The complexity of the entire case is evident in the size of the file in the clerk of court’s office. The two file folders, three inches in depth, are packed with such things as amended complaints, motions for amendments, motions to enlarge time, certificates of service, interrogatories, as well as the original complaints and the defendants’ responses. In their responses the defendants deny culpability.

For many years, North Carolina courts have followed what is known as Public Duty Doctrine, which protects local governments from liability for the actions of public employees. Traditionally, that immunity was applied only to law enforcement officers.

The state Court of Appeals expanded the law to include other types of county and municipal employees, such as building inspectors.

Cunningham argued that point before the Supreme Court last year and Frye wrote a decision reversing the Appeals Court ruling. Frye’s decision said, in effect, that the Public Duty Doctrine applies only to law enforcement.

“It was a monumental decision because it opened the door for property owners to seek redress on the basis of the Governmental Immunity interpretation,” Van Camp said. “Before that, insurance didn’t matter.”

While the Public Duty Doctrine says essentially that a county owes no “duty” to the public, even if an inspector makes a mistake, the Governmental Immunity law provides that counties waive their immunity if they have liability insurance coverage. Under the Public Duty Doctrine, the public could not bring suit against a local government, that is, until the state Court of Appeals expanded the interpretation, only to be reversed by the higher court.

Van Camp said that Cunningham’s argument and the chief justice’s decision triggered the course followed in this and other suits against local governments.

“Otherwise, it would have been dismissed,” he said.

In its responses to the plaintiffs’ charges, the county has argued that its insurance policy, through the County Government Risk Pool, does not cover liability for actions of building inspectors. The county also declares that it is not responsible for any of the damages claimed by the Dotsons.

County Manager David McNeill Jr. said he had no comment when asked about the case earlier this week.

The case dates to 1997 when the Dotsons entered into a contract with Alan C. Walters, through his business, Walters Construction Co., to build a home at Beacon Ridge.

In their complaint, the Dotsons charge that Walters Construction Co. held only a limited license in which the company could not enter into contract or the bidding process for any project valued in excess of $250,000. The building permit obtained by Walters carried an estimated value of $360,000, according to the complaint.

The Dotsons say they were unaware that Walters obtained the building permit for their home under the license held by Sandhills Building Systems, in effect making Patrick E. Quick Jr. and Sandhills Building Systems Inc. their contractor, not Walters.

Defendants listed in the complaint include Walters as an individual, his company, Quick as an individual, Sandhills Building Systems Inc., and the county. The complaint was later amended to name ABEXTCO Inc., doing business as Aberdeen Exterminating Co., among the defendants.

The complaint describes the house as defective in structure, framing and bracing. It says the home exhibits areas of water intrusion and moisture damage, cracks in walls, columns and floors and is defective in installation of windows and window trim.

It charges, in part, that the “defendants failed to construct the plaintiffs’ home in a good and workman-like manner, violated numerous provisions of the North Carolina Building Code” and “failed to adequately supervise and monitor the plaintiffs’ project.” It further charges that the building “is otherwise defective in design, structural engineering, construction and materials.”

Many defects, the document continues, “constitute blatant violations of the N.C. Building Code, which the defendant Moore County, by and through its inspectors, is under a duty to enforce and to prevent.”

In particular, the complaint charges the county’s “failure to adequately inspect the defendants’ work and construction of the plaintiffs’ home and that a reasonable inspection of said home, as required by N.C. law, would have revealed the numerous defects in the plaintiffs’ home at the appropriate stage in construction so said defects could have been repaired at a reasonable cost.”

Among the numerous counts listed in the complaint against the companies are breach of contract, fraud, misrepresentation and conspiracy, unfair and deceptive trade practices, and breach of expressed and implied warranties. Moore County is cited for gross negligence.

The Dotsons are seeking between $10,000 and $150,000, or more, in damages, asking $10,000 or more from each defendant, including the county. It also asks that the amounts be trebled “as a result of unfair and deceptive trade practices” plus attorney fees.