Home>Levelset Community>Legal Help>On my Mechanics Lien paperwork for "LAST DAY OF PERFORMED LABOR AND MATERIALS DELIVERED" the Date was entered wrong. Will this be used against me in court and keep me from getting Paid?
On my Mechanics Lien paperwork for "LAST DAY OF PERFORMED LABOR AND MATERIALS DELIVERED" the Date was entered wrong. Will this be used against me in court and keep me from getting Paid?
I submitted the date of September 29 2018 and I noticed December 29,2018 was on the Lien document. My order summary date is December 28, 2018 so not sure why this was not noticed before it was sent .
1 reply
Jan 8, 2019
While lien statutes are generally supposed to be interpreted to provide broad protection to people and companies involved in construction, compliance with the rules and requirements of making an actual lien claim must be strictly complied with. Whether a "simple" error or typographical mistake would invalidate a lien is a complicated question and one that generally must be decided by the court.
Oftentimes, a typographical error can be overlooked by the court when the error did not cause damage to anybody relying on the incorrect or mistakenly included information. That is not an iron-clad rule, however. Problems range from problems with the identification of the property (which are often fatal to the lien claim), to misspellings in some section (which are generally forgiven). An error in the last furnishing date falls somewhere between those extremes. While it almost assuredly would result in a challenge from the property owner, whether it is a fatal defect is less certain. A significant issue with respect to last furnishing dates, however, is how it relates to the lien deadline.
In Washington, a lien must be filed by the 90th day after the lien claimant last furnished labor or materials to the project. For a project on which a claimant last furnished labor or materials on September 29, 2018 - any lien recorded after December 28, 2018 would be void, and unenforceable. So any error in the content of the lien would likely be of secondary importance.