Home>Levelset Community>Legal Help>Do we lose lien rights if we send prelim info with the customer's DBA name on prelim, instead of the actual legal name?
Do we lose lien rights if we send prelim info with the customer's DBA name on prelim, instead of the actual legal name?
I am new to Hirsch and have noticed that prelims are being done by using customers' DBA, instead of full legal name. I am wanting to know if our lien rights are affected by filing under DBA, instead of legal name.
1 reply
Oct 11, 2018
That's a great question. As I'm sure you could imagine, best practice is probably to be use a recipient's legal name. However, there's nothing in the California Civil Code that states a company's full legal name must appear on notices. Under § 8102(a)(2) of the California Civil Code, notice must include "The name and address of the direct contractor." However, the name must be included "to the extent known to the person giving the notice" - so there's a little bit of room for error built in. Further, under § 8102(b), small variances from notice requirements will not invalidate the notice if the notice is still sufficient to put the receiving party on notice. Thus, if a business is known by their DBA name, and if notice is actually sent to that business as required, using the businesses DBA name instead of their legal name shouldn't have any affect on the effectiveness of notices that were otherwise properly sent. Should the project go sideways and a lien claim become necessary, it would likely be a good idea to be as accurate as possible and include both the business' DBA name (under which notices were sent) and the business' legal name, though, to cover all bases.