Home>Levelset Community>Legal Help>A mechanics lien was successfully recorded against my customer and now she has hired an attorney to write a letter threatening to sue if I don't remove the lien within 10 days. What should my next move be? Can I file a lawsuit for the amount owed?

A mechanics lien was successfully recorded against my customer and now she has hired an attorney to write a letter threatening to sue if I don't remove the lien within 10 days. What should my next move be? Can I file a lawsuit for the amount owed?

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Filed a lien against a customer and now she is threatening to sue if I don't remove the lien within 10 days. what should my next move be? Can I file a lawsuit or should I? The amount owed is just over 40k and 32k was for gravel and trucking which I had to cover out of my pocket to keep my accounts in good standing.

2 replies

May 23, 2020

Yes, you can file a lawsuit for the amount owed, which is presumably the lien amount, but you only have 90 days after recording a lien to file a lawsuit. So long as you are within 90 days and your lien rights are in order, you should file a lawsuit before your time expires. If your time has expired, you should release the lien. That said, you may still have time to record another lien, depending on the status of the completion of the project. If you would like to discuss, feel free to call me next week. Thanks, Andrew Carlton & Alberola and/or Andrew Carlton have not been retained by the recipient of the above comment and, moreover, the above comment does not create an attorney-client relationship. The above is general commentary based on limited and insufficient information. If you wish to obtain legal advice, please contact Andrew Carlton at 949-954-6666 x101, or by email at andrew@cnalawfirm.com.

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May 26, 2020

You should immediately contact an attorney to review the letter and make sure your lien is proper and valid. If you did it incorrectly or if the lien expired after 90 days because you didn’t perfect the lien by filing a lawsuit to foreclose it, then you will want to release the lien right away. Otherwise you can be liable for the owner’s attorney’s fees if they file a petition with the court to have the Court judicially remove the lien for them.

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