A good question! Alas, I'd guess not. Even without any evidence of the inspector having been bribed, had I better documented per-issue the before and after and cost, I may even also had something actionable against the seller who perhaps underdisclosed, they did the shoddy work, literally painting over underlying problems, plumbing with pipes not even glued or threads sealed, running bathroom extractor fan ducts not even through the insulation, so they must have known. However, at most times subsequently, there has been a manageable amount known, it's just that issues kept being discovered so the remaining distance to the end keeps on increasing. With more foresight I would have not gotten so far without anybody having any clear record of the myriad work. But, with enough foresight for that necessity, I would certainly not have bought the house in the first place.

While many of the issues were superficially hidden, it's also plausible that the inspector is quite at fault in that the handyman was quite shocked and, in his previous stint as an inspector, would have given this house a hard fail on multiple counts, let alone mentioning other urgent issues that were fairly immediately apparent to him as he looked around. (For being younger than me, he has a surprising range of previous qualified-professional stints, everything from asbestos removal from radioactive areas to being a certified master car mechanic, he's even a licensed radiographer; he stopped being a house inspector after enough people didn't like being told their dream home is a disaster. Though, he did start construction jobs at age fourteen.) But, no good record now exists of that before state, at least enough to persuade a court whose defendant isn't readily agreeing.