Home>Levelset Community>Legal Help>I was hired by the owner of a RV/Mobile home Park. I was in agreement with the owner of the park to install all the new water meters for each mobile home for the city/park. I made several out of pocket purchases and used large amounts of my own materials for work on 2 separate mobile homes that the owner asked me to make repairs to. I've sent emails to owner and now can get no response. Between labor and materials I'm owed around $3000. And now I have replenished my supplies for other jobs out of my own pocket. Do I need to get liens on each individual mobile home or am I needing to put on the entire park because we had a agreement for me to install the new city water meters@ $120 per meter and there's 46 meters?
I was hired by the owner of a RV/Mobile home Park. I was in agreement with the owner of the park to install all the new water meters for each mobile home for the city/park. I made several out of pocket purchases and used large amounts of my own materials for work on 2 separate mobile homes that the owner asked me to make repairs to. I've sent emails to owner and now can get no response. Between labor and materials I'm owed around $3000. And now I have replenished my supplies for other jobs out of my own pocket. Do I need to get liens on each individual mobile home or am I needing to put on the entire park because we had a agreement for me to install the new city water meters@ $120 per meter and there's 46 meters?
This is a pretty interesting question because it involves mobile homes...and mobile homes create messy legal questions around lien rights . The question always boils down to whether "mobile homes" are "property," or not. At the onset, it's important to note that if you DO have a lien right, it's a good idea to use it.. In answering this question, I'm going to start with the specific lien law in Kansas. In Kansas, the statutes provide that anyone can file a lien who has "furnish[ed] labor, equipment, material, or supplies used or consumed for the improvement of real property." The question then turns on what is "real property," and conveniently, we don't get a definition of this in the Kansas lien laws. This term is defined in other places in Kansas law....and again, conveniently, it's defined differently. Such as in the criminal states as "every estate, interest, and right in lands, tenements and hereditaments," and in the statutes governing appraisals as "an identified parcel or tract of land, including improvements, if any." Personally, I think there is room for a colorable argument that a mobile home itself is "real property," if it is an "improvement" to the land. You would be able to get into a definitional battle in the courts about this...but, in the situation that you describe, you may not need to. And all of this stuff about definitions is just some extra credit.
And that is because you seemed to install "new water meters" for the park. Though I can't know for sure, it sounds to me like these water meters were installed on the land itself and as part of the land, and not as part of the mobile homes. You could, for example, move another mobile home in to use the same water meter. If that is the case, the work is much more clearly lienable. Your lien claim would be against the underlying property itself (i.e. the land), and not against the mobile homes. If it is all one tract of property and one tract of land, then it's the entire project value, with one lien, on the land. Good luck!