John:

Thanks for the input. I agree some courts are putting more emphasis on the document than was intended by the National Fire Protection Association and that the association has no power of the courts actions, but I wonder if that makes it right.

The reason I posted the question is that I have heard fire investigator, by using wording that may not be understood by others, suggest it is a mandatory document. As an example, if I were to say this is the standard of care for the fire investigation, what am I really saying? To most fire investigator it would mean exactly what you have said, a point of reference that can be used to measure the quality of the investigation, but what seems not to be understood is this is a legal term that is well defined in the law. The term relates to negligence in the law and from there addresses what a person is required to do. Here is where the mandatory issue comes to play. When you require a person to perform in a specific way it no longer is voluntary but is a mandatory requirement. The other wording, benchmark, and gold standard are just words used to express a belief that the status of the document is higher than other documents available but they do not have the same meaning under the law as the term “standard of care.”

The idea of my question was to learn if there are those that believe the standard set by the National Fire Protection Association for 921 is too low and it should be elevated to a mandatory document. As there were good reasons brought out about the notes, I thought there may be other opinions just as good as to the elevation of the status of the document. Here again, at this time I think it is a personal opinion as to how the person accepts the document but I do understand that opinion can change as new data is presented to be evaluated.

Jim