Who is to blame for tradesman errors

I wanted to check this out on who is to blame when a tradesman damages something. If a person is installing something and drilled into a concrete wall which resulted in electrical cables chased into the wall being damaged. I had to get an electrician out to find the problem and then fix it. There was nothing obvious to indicate that there was cables chased into the walls but the tradesman did not obviously check if there was. The question is if it is an error on behalf of the tradesman who drilled into the wall and as a result be responsible for settling the bill that was paid to the electrican. I was going to deduct the amount I paid the electrican from his bill as he caused the problem. He says its not his fault? Has anyone experienced any situation like this before or give advice?

thanks.

Re: Who is to blame

Who is to blame

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If he was doing his job properly he is supposed to check this out before he starts drilling so it would appear to have been his fault. Isn't there some sort of tool for tracing cable within walls. I did hear an electrician mention once that this can be the time consuming side of some jobs but better safe than sorry.

Don't know if this will be of any help...but in the house that we are building at the mo, when the workers were taking down scaffolding, they cracked a pane of glass (a very expensive piece of glass!). We informed the builder who will be paying for a replacement pane. (We had sourced the windows outside of our contract with the builder). Why didn't your tradesman used one of those electrical detector thingys to determine whether or not there was cables in the wall...even I would know to do that... I would hold him responsible if his shoddy work led you to incur extra expense....

I think there's a general principle that whoever causes that sort of damage is responsible for rectifying it.
Certainly if an electrician working for me drilled through a water pipe, for example, the client would expect me to sort it out.

Within reason. The cable finder will detect current that is not too deeply buried. Most tradesmen would be able to correctly fix this sort of problem - which unfortunately happens from time to time. The job merely takes a little longer.

Was the damaged cable running vertically in the wall? Was there a plug or some other electrical item directly (or nearly directly) above or below the drilled hole?

If so he is definitely at fault... afaik electrical cables should always run vertically or horizontally, never diaganolly. Never drill a hole above or below a plug or switch etc.

I reckon he is at fault anyway.. as a previous poster has said, if an electrician drills through a water pipe he can't simply say 'Not my problem', it clearly is his problem. He should also have insurance for this type of thing.

This is presuming the electrical cable was installed correctly, i.e vertically. I am open to correction as I am not an electrician.

Cheers
Joe