Tag Archives: Notice to Lien Agent

January 11, 2016 · 10:40 AM

Improving the Odds for a Jackpot Year for Your Commercial General Contracting Business

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Wednesday’s Powerball drawing promises the winner a $1.3 $1.5 billion (yes, that’s “billion” with a “b”) jackpot.  Unfortunately, your odds of picking the winning numbers are about 1 in 292 million, or roughly the same odds as an architect acknowledging a deficiency in construction plans & specifications (I kid!).  Buying a few extra tickets might “improve” your chances, but they’ll remain infinitesimally small.

Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to improve the odds your commercial general contracting business will have a jackpot year in 2016.  These five tips spring to mind:

  1.  Know who you’re doing business with.  One bad project can spoil the gains from ten successful ones.  Do your homework on the owners who want you to build their projects.  Avoid owners who insist on oppressive contract terms, have a history of problem jobs, and/or just don’t seem to know what they’re doing.  Sometimes the best contracts are the ones you don’t sign.
  2. Buy out subcontracts thoughtfully.  Just as you need to be careful picking & choosing the jobs you bid, you should be equally careful about selecting your downstream dance partners.  First-tier subcontractors offering you a price advantage might not necessarily be reliable team players down-the-road.  Balance price with dependability. 
  3. Cultivate a culture of jobsite safety.  Having a track record for operating safe jobsites makes your company more attractive to the best owners, keeps your workers’ compensation mod rate in-check, and decreases the chances you’ll be spending time & money this year defending against claims.  Safety first, every day.
  4.  Secure your payment rights.  In North Carolina, that means filing a Notice to Lien Agent as your work begins, informing suppliers of the identity of the lien agent, guarding against double payment liability through the Notice of Contract procedure, and enforcing your lien rights timely, when necessary.  If you’re unaware of how any of these tools work, call your construction attorney immediately.  Speaking of construction lawyers…
  5. Rely on your lawyer for more than just dispute resolution.  Construction attorneys do more than resolve claims.  We draft & review contracts (as well as construction forms) and provide counseling throughout the construction phase of a project and beyond.  Make an experienced construction attorney your partner in profitability all year long.

Good luck, both with Wednesday’s drawing and with the year ahead.  As always, comments welcome!

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Filed under Construction Risk Management, Contract Review & Negotiation, Lien Law, OSHA

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April 18, 2014 · 8:57 AM

Lienguard, Inc. Found Itself in the N.C. State Bar’s Crosshairs; Might LiensNC, LLC Be Next?

LienguardCrosshairs

As the Lienguard case discussed in my prior blog post (immediately below) makes abundantly clear, the North Carolina State Bar is willing to prosecute unauthorized practice of law (“UPL”) claims against online mechanics’ lien service providers lacking a license to practice law in North Carolina.

Friday ForumThere’s been a boisterous reaction to the decision in the blogosphere, and in the Friday Forum spirit, I commend to your reading the following: “Business Court Makes North Carolina Safe for Construction Lawyers” by Mack Sperling of Brooks Pierce; “Can Software Practice Law? The Unauthorized Practice of Law and Technology” by Nate Budde of zlien.com; and “NC Business Court Enjoins National Lien Filing Firm for UPL” by Brian Schoolman of Safran Law, all of which were promoted on Twitter over the past 10 days or so:

I also highly recommend checking out the Comments section of my previous blog post.  Among the thoughts posted there are those of Scott Wolfe, Jr., founder of zlien.com, one of Lienguard, Inc.’s competitors.  Scott makes a number of thought-provoking and response-worthy arguments in support of his belief that online lien filing services do not engage in UPL.

The subject of this blog post is Scott’s argument that under the logic of the Lienguard decision, LiensNC, LLC, the limited liability company which operates the LiensNC.com website created to facilitate the filing of Designations of Lien Agent and Notices to Lien Agent under North Carolina’s new Mechanics’ Lien Agent statute, engages in UPL:

As to preliminary notices — the NC court in this case does not, and really cannot not, distinguish between preparing a preliminary notice versus preparing a lien notice. They are both legal documents.

This case calls LienGuard’s preparation of notices illegal, but the UPL statute clearly enables or allows LiensNC, LLC – “a coalition of title insurance underwriters” – to assist contractors and suppliers with the state’s preliminary notices. See: http://www.liensnc.com/LiensNC__LLC.html

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[T]here is some momentum to distinguish between “serious” legal documents and maybe “easy” legal documents.  The UPL “practice of law” definition and the case law surrounding it offers no opportunity to make this distinction.  Preliminary notices … are all “legal documents.”

I’ve given a fair amount of thought to these comments over the past week in trying to predict whether LiensNC.com might be among the State Bar’s next targets.  For the three reasons set forth below, I highly doubt it: Continue reading →

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Filed under Lien Law, NC case law, State law, policy & news

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April 2, 2014 · 8:57 AM

As North Carolina’s Lien Agent Statute Turns 1, Three Tips for Soothing the Growing Pains

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North Carolina’s lien agent statute, which went into effect on April 1 last year, celebrated its first birthday yesterday.

Didn’t join the party?  I can’t say I’m surprised.

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March 19, 2014 · 8:57 AM

Prefer to Serve Your Own Lien & Bond Preliminary Notices? These Three Web Tools Can Help.

Wednesday WisdomWhile the conservative approach is to rely on an experienced construction attorney to serve preliminary lien and bond notices for North Carolina construction projects, there are many subs and suppliers who prefer the DIY approach.  I’m sure many of you do-it-yourselfers already rely on these web-based tools for facilitating your preliminary notices, but just in case, here are my three favorites:

Continue reading →

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Filed under Lien Law, Payment Bonds, State law, policy & news, Subcontractors, Technology

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November 21, 2013 · 8:21 AM

When the Well Runs Dry: Seven Tips for Guarding Against a Failure in Project Financing

Photo by inkknife_2000 via Flickr *

Photo by inkknife_2000 via Flickr *

Last Thursday, November 14, 2013, I participated in a webinar hosted by Engineering News-Record® on “The Five Risks You Never Saw Coming,” which is still available on-demand and free to the public on ENR’s webinar page.

The first risk addressed by the panel is the subject of this post: the risk that a private owner’s financial well might run dry.

As one of the panelists, Atlanta construction attorney Gina Vitiello (@GinaVitiello on Twitter), discussed, project funding can fail for a number of reasons.  The owner might run out of capital funds, perhaps because it overestimated the availability of project funding or underestimated the total costs of the endeavor.  Or the owner might lose its financing, for example by defaulting on its loan obligations.  Or the lending institution financing the project might fail.

No matter how or why the financial well might run dry, the consequences for the prime contractor, construction manager at risk or design-builder can be catastrophic.  What can be done to guard against this risk?

Continue reading →

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April 1, 2013 · 8:00 AM

N.C. Liens/Bonds, They Are A-Changin’ Part IV: The Lien Agent Rises

In previous installments in this series, I discussed how last year’s lien and bond law revisions protect subs and suppliers via the “Bankruptcy Fix,” while also protecting prime contractors via double payment protection on bonded, public projects.

What about the title insurance industry?  Well, their legislative “holy grail” was protection from so-called “hidden liens,” and their quest succeeded when the North Carolina General Assembly approved a preliminary notice procedure that creates a new party soon to be integral to the mechanics’ lien preservation process: the owner’s “lien agent.”

While I’ve never questioned the need to address the “hidden lien” issue, I am squarely on record as opposing this particular legislation in the particular manner in which it was passed.  Candidly, however, that battle’s been lost, and the industry’s focus needs to be on complying with the new regime.  Indeed, the statutory provisions governing the preliminary lien notices called for by the legislative revisions go into effect for virtually all private construction projects for which the first construction work commences today, April 1, 2013 (happy April Fool’s Day!), or later.

In other words, the horse it out of the barn, and it ain’t goin’ back in.  Time to saddle up and ride.  And so this post provides an introduction to the new preliminary lien notice each potential lien claimant must provide to the owner’s “lien agent” in order to fully preserve future lien rights under North Carolina’s mechanics’ lien statutes.  I’ll start with a quick primer on the problem of hidden liens, and then move through the basics of the new statute from the perspective of each party in the contractual chain, from the top down.  I’ve attached a multitude of links that should prove helpful in transitioning to this brave new world of mechanics’ lien preservation. Continue reading →

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Filed under Design Contracts, Feature story, Lien Law, State law, policy & news, Subcontractors

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