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Have you been paid for the material you sold to improve real property? The legal rights of a lien claimant in the construction industry includes a breach of contract remedy as well as the extraordinary remedies provided by the mechanics liens laws. The legal rights of a lien claimant can include a claim of lien upon the real property improved and the funds due to the parties involved with the construction. While the contractual claim is generally a well-known claim among most credit professional, the mechanics lien remedy can be complex and often ignored or misunderstood. Frequent failure to assert valid claims by those otherwise entitled to do so and the unnecessary cost of needless litigation is generally the result of a lack of knowledge about the applicable lien law.

We get quite a few questions on a regular basis where someone has provided labor and/or parts and service to a piece of construction equipment, motorized vehicle and now even electric vehicles and you have not been paid. What should you do? Is it possible that you can keep the equipment or sell it, even if the title owner was not the person who asked you to repair it?

As an initial matter, it is worth pointing out that a sub-contractor’s best bet for getting paid is to timely file a mechanic’s lien within 120 days of the last day of furnishing labor or materials. However, sometimes, things happen. This has been particularly true recently with COVID-19 related shutdowns, delays, and closures. If you are a sub-contractor who needs to be paid, but you find yourself outside of the 120-day mechanic’s lien filing window, you have another lien option: a claim of lien on funds