What is the scope of the respondent's liability for failing to ensure that the soil on which the building was to be erected was capable of supporting its weight?

The trial judge was clearly of the opinion that the respondent’s liability extended only to erecting the building in a proper workmanlike manner and there was no liability on it to ensure that the soil, on which the building was to be erected, was capable of supporting its weight. With respect, how can it be said that the respondent performed the work in a proper workmanlike manner when it knew, or ought to have known, that the building when completed might not be fit for the purpose for which it was intended? To adopt the language of Bayley, J., in Duncan v. Blundell (1820), 3 Stark 7, 749, “Where a person is employed in a work of skill, the employer buys both his labour and his judgment; he ought not to undertake the work if it cannot succeed, and he should know whether it will or not, of course it is otherwise if the party employing him chooses to supersede the workman’s judgment by using his own.”

The principle to be applied in cases of this nature was succinctly stated by Archibald, J., in Chevalier v. Thompkins, 48 Que S.C. 53 at p. 55: “A contractor who undertakes work which requires to be placed upon foundations or other works furnished by the proprietor, cannot excuse himself from the obligation to deliver his work to the proprietor in good condition by saying that the bad condition of his work was caused by the bad condition of works of other contractors upon which his work had to be placed.”