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What do we do now?

We filed a lien in May on a project -- it looks like there are other liens on the project, a lot of people are having a hard time getting paid. What should we be doing now? We don't have a lot of money for attorneys.

2 replies

Dec 3, 2020

Hello,

You sue. A lien is a cloud on title. Alone, it does not do anything. To recover funds, you will have to hire an attorney and evaluate whether or not there woud be any assets to recover upon if the project is residential or if you can simply foreclose on the property if it is commercial. If the economics are favorable, you then sue in District Court to enforce your lien.

My office handles these matters on a flat fee basis so feel free to shoot me an email and we can evaluate your case and I can provide you with my fee schedule.

E. Aaron Cartwright III
214.789.1354
Aaron@EACLawyer.com

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Dec 3, 2020

By filing a line I am assuming you provided the proper notices and filed the affidavit of lien with the county, all within the time frames required by law. I am also going to presume you are a sub or a supplier and not the general so you have filed an M&M (Mechanic's and Materialman's lien). The first issue is priority. Is your lien competing with a mortgage for example. If the general contract for the project preceded the mortgage or construction loan contracts, you are probably OK and take priority over those liens. However, I am going to guess that your concern is that M&M liens have been filed by other subs and suppliers. If so, you will share in whatever money can be obtained proportionately, in other words proportionate to the respective debts behind each M&M line. Frankly, if you can you might seek to collaborate with other M&M lien holders on the cost of an attorney as long as you and all the other collaborating attorneys are willing to truly collaborate. In other words you are all willing to agree to proportioning your claims. If you cannot afford an attorney and also cannot work a deal to work with other claimants to share the attorney cost, you will have to pursue the matter pro se. In other words, file a lawsuit to foreclose the lien by drafting and filing the papers yourself. For this you can probably find the documents in a law library. Some counties have law libraries available to the public with form books. This is not as good as an attorney dealing with it; however, it is better than nothing.

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