Who’s watching over your contractor’s license? California case highlights importance of license management in all states

Description

Abstract: When a couple directed a builder to stop work after he’d failed to provide documents to back up time-and-materials billings, he filed a mechanics’ lien against the property in the name of the company. But it turned out that the company’s owner, having left the country to do missionary work, had let his California general contractor’s license be used by the employee, instead of assigning it to a legally “qualifying individual” before it expired. As a result, the court dismissed the lien claim and reinstated the judgment against the company. A sidebar to this article looks at the legislative history of California’s tough contractor licensing law penalty provisions.