Running the Business · Part 3

Case: the job that went unpaid. Where the contractor lost lien rights and how to have kept them

A plumbing subcontractor does $38,000 of clean work on a restaurant buildout, is paid $21,000, and never sees the rest. The general contractor ran out of money, the owner had paid the GC in full, and there was a construction lender. Six decisions, each of them ordinary, took away every remedy the law had given this plumber: the preliminary notice never sent, the unconditional release signed for a check that never came, the notice of completion nobody watched for, the lien recorded late and served on nobody, and the entity that capped the small claims case at $6,250. This case walks each decision to the rule it broke and shows the version of the job where the plumber is paid.