defense against a lien on my property

[Merle_Green]

I need advise for defending myself against a lien that my garage builder placed on my property. He says I breached the contract by not allowing him to finish the garage. The truth is that he gave me a date that the garage would be finished and he missed the date by 2 months. I told him that I would not pay him anymore money until it was finished. He said he would not finish it unless I continued our agreement to pay in 3 installments. After the upfront fee, his work slowed down, so I would not pay anymore till he finished. Now he has issued a lien. How do I defend myself?

 

[jordan]

Did you specify a date in the contract for the work to be done? Sounds like you may even be able to countersue under breach of contract. What are the details?

 

[Merle_Green]

No, unfortunately this was a verbal assurance that the garage would be finished by Thanksgiving. They have not denied to us that they made this verbal commitment, but since they have an attorney already, I am sure their attorney has advised them to deny this commitment in court. How can I defend myself? They are just sticking to their guns that we had a contract and I broke it, so I owe them. I continue to say that since their work was slow and they would not give us good reasons for the slowdown (they were actually subcontracting the work out and their subcontractors were slow) our offer to them was to pay in full after the work was completed. I did not want to keep tying up my money for them to drag out this simple project month after month. They would not agree to our offer to pay the remainder when the garage was finished. I have since found someone else to finish the garage and all of the work has been done. Will they use this against me in any way too?

 

[mike]

You act like they broke the contract and caused additional damages, including wrongfully placing a lien. If you give them the impression like you'll settle easily and are wimpy their attorney will take advantage of that. Act like you know your rights, don't you think?

Their attorney cannot advise them against telling the truth in court. If they do, you have the right to cross examine them. Additionally, I don't think their attorney can put their client on the stand if the attorney knows that the client will lie. Do you have anything in writing? While the case doesn't seem to be lost and you may have a case of breach of contract, you really need to look FIRST at the written stuff. You should probably act firm with them as though you are confident you will win and get damages in court. You may very well get it but right now it seems that you are in a mind game. What level court are you in and around how much is in question?

There are also licensing standards boards. You should file a complaint or find out all about them. It seems that many people don't sober up until they have reason to fear that someone else with some power will know exactly what bad acts they did.