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When Joints Fail: The Legal History of Timber Structural Collapse
How Courtroom Battles Rewrote the Rules of Wood Construction

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About this book:

When Joints Fail: The Legal History of Timber Structural Collapse When Joints Fail reveals the hidden courtroom dramas that forged today’s timber‑building standards—from medieval mortise‑and‑tenon disputes to modern mass‑timber class actions. Each chapter unpacks a real structural catastrophe, the legal battle that followed, and how a judge’s ruling rewrote the rules of joinery, testing, and liability.

Readers will walk through centuries of timber triumphs and tragedies: the Great Fire of London’s statutory overhaul, the Tacoma Trestle’s standard‑of‑care precedent, the Hyatt Regency walkway’s cross‑disciplinary lesson, and the emerging challenges of CLT, CNC software, and climate‑driven loads. The book blends rigorous scholarship with vivid storytelling, turning dry legal transcripts into a gripping narrative of how justice shapes the very wood that shelters us.

Ideal for architects, engineers, lawyers, preservationists, and anyone fascinated by the interplay of law and craft, When Joints Fail offers a fresh lens on every beam, plate, and panel—showing that the safety of our wooden structures is as much a product of courtroom verdicts as of carpenter’s skill.

Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: The Gavel and the Girt – How Liability Reshaped the Timber Craft
  • Chapter 1: The Mortise on Trial: Early Common Law and the Craft Guilds
  • Chapter 2: The Fall of the Millwright: Industrialization and the Birth of Structural Negligence
  • Chapter 3: The Great Chicago Fire and the Legal War on Balloon Framing
  • Chapter 4: The Patent Peg: How Victorian Litigation Standardized Timber Connectors
  • Chapter 5: The Knuckle and the Knee: Marine Timber Failures in the Admiralty Courts
  • Chapter 6: The Tacoma Trestle Collapse: Defining the Standard of Care for Wood Engineers
  • Chapter 7: Splitting the Grain: The Shear Failure of 1912 and the Code Reforms
  • Chapter 8: The Rotten Tenon: Premises Liability and Hidden Decay in Heavy Timber
  • Chapter 9: Green Wood, Dry Law: The Legal Battles Over Seasoning and Shrinkage
  • Chapter 10: The Stadium Roof Disaster: Glulam Delamination and Class-Action Precedents
  • Chapter 11: The Truss Plate Wars: Who Bears the Blame for Prefabricated Failures?
  • Chapter 12: Shear Walls and San Francisco: Seismic Lawsuits That Rigidified Timber Framing
  • Chapter 13: The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse: Structural Steel Meets Heavy Timber Precedent
  • Chapter 14: Condos in the Rain: The Pacific Northwest Leaky Condo Crisis and Framing Liability
  • Chapter 15: The Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) Trials: Defining Liability in Mass Timber Systems
  • Chapter 16: The Termite Defense: Exculpatory Clauses and Biotic Joinery Failure
  • Chapter 17: The Expert Witness: How Wood Scientists Proved Stress-Grade Fraud in Court
  • Chapter 18: Fire Retardant Failures: The Legal Backlash Against Acid-Treated Roof Trusses
  • Chapter 19: The Cantilever Crisis: Balcony Collapses and the Evolution of Exterior Wood Codes
  • Chapter 20: The Weight of Snow: Roof Collapses and the Legal Redefinition of Local Live Loads
  • Chapter 21: The Digital Joiner: Software Liability in Modern CNC-Milled Timber Framing
  • Chapter 22: The Historic Preservation Conflict: Strict Liability vs. Antique Joinery Compliance
  • Chapter 23: The Subcontractor’s Knot: Shifting Indemnity in Modern Mass Timber Projects
  • Chapter 24: The Global Forest: Importing Exotic Wood and the Foreign Defect Jurisdiction
  • Chapter 25: The Future of Failure: Climate Change, Extreme Weather, and the Next Era of Wood Law
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Author:

Kathleen J. Roberts

Published By:

MixCache.com Extended Catalog

Type:

Nonfiction

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