We had a Public job here in California that was finished around March 2020. A stop notice issued through LevelSet was issued on April 22, 2020. The GC will not take my calls or reply to emails. They only owe us $8,633.10 retention. What should our next step be as their Sub who could use $8,600? X Construction Company
It would probably not be cost effective for you to file a lawsuit to enforce your Stop Payment Notice since your claim is less than $9K. However, I advise you to immediately make a claim against the GC’s payment bond. Since this is a public job, the GC would have been required to post a payment bond for the protection of the subs and suppliers. Ask the owner (not the GC) for a copy of the bond if you don’t have one already. You can then notify the bonding company of your claim. This can be a strong remedy because contractor’s don’t like to get their bonding companies involved, and they won’t be able to perform public jobs without bonding capacity. If you didn’t do a Preliminary Notice initially at the start of the job you will need to send out a preliminary bond notice now first. Also find out if a Notice of Completion has been recorded by the public entity yet since that starts the clock ticking for many remedies. I’m happy to help you with this if you have any questions.
Cathleen M. Curl, Esq.
Law Office of Cathleen M. Curl
700 El Camino Real, Suite 200
Millbrae, CA 94030
T 650-871-5955 /cell 650-868-6322