When I began the permit process, a man at the permit office introduced himself as Adolphe Huriaux. When he pronounced his name, it was with a thick French accent. He insisted that he was my point of contact from that moment forward. He described a set of elaborate plans, not the sketch I had from Peter Ruff or my friend Jun, the interior designer. He wanted to see my firewall plan, my structural plan, my electrical plan, my HVAC plan, my sprinkler plan, and all the details to be included. It was tense, and in hindsight, this was “special for me treatment.” 

At that time, sprinklers in historic buildings were not required. Neither were two-hour firewalls. It is likely Mr. Huriaux knew that.

Mr. Huriaux also insisted that I work with a nearly 100-year-old structural engineer who insisted that the building structure had been compromised in my demolition and created a plan that reframed the structure with steel I-Beams on all three floors. In all of my naivety, I knew it was not on budget; I also knew it was overkill and not how modern construction was done.

When I passed on his choice for structural engineer, this letter below was waiting for me at the permits office, signed by Adolphe Huriaux, and required a structural engineer to sign off on each phase of our project.

I’ve since confirmed that this was not business as usual.

At that time, I had a lawyer-litigator-man-friend who had done a historic preservation project. He helped me get the building on the trust and find a historic paperwork specialist who did the local paperwork. We named my building the Brook Building in honor of my late father.

My lawyer-litigator-man-friend also listened to me regularly lament about the treatment I was enduring from the county permits office. I would show up at the end of the day, steaming over the demands of Adolphe Huriaux, who rarely seemed to accept our drawings and approve them. 

He would challenge all aspects of the plans, and he made us do things that were not requirements of the law, sending me back sometimes for revision to plans unnecessarily. He went out of his way to make this process far more expensive and time-consuming than was necessary. It didn’t dawn on me to check his “authority position” at the time, and I wish I had.

Abuse of Authority Equals #Harrassment

At one point, when I phoned for approval on a round of revisions on the plans, a woman answered Mr. Huriaux’s line. As I was leaving her a detailed message about how we addressed his required changes to the two-hour firewall drawing that he sent me back to redo, she (kind of rudely) interrupted me and asked, “Why are you dealing with a plumbing plan inspector on this?” She said, “Hon, you don’t need to work with this guy; just ignore him; he’s playing with you.”

That evening, my lawyer-litigator-man-friend offered to represent me in a lawsuit against the county for the treatment that I was enduring. It was harassment. For no reason, this guy who had no authority brought it upon himself to oversee my process and make it more difficult than necessary when he was NOT in a position of authority.