I don't have any actual contracts for any of the work performed. All I have is hundreds of invoices that were paid without incident. Lawyer said that may help, but it would depend on the judge.
A verbal contract is a contract. A contract has four parts, the offer, acceptance, consideration, and legality. My opinion is that I as the contractor make the offer and the customer accepts, but I'm sure there are many equal and opposite opinions about that.
Mentally it might be best to consider it a lost cause and move on without losing any more time, capital, thought process. POM peace of mind.
Two things you can try.
If you feel you're on good terms with them and want to test that, ask them to convert your verbal contract to a written one. Prepare your invoice to settle everything where it is now. That is your demand letter. You may ask them to agree in writing that they accept the invoice and they agree (accept) they owe you the money. In effect they would be writing you a note.
The lien is more powerful, collectionwise. Any property owner going for refi or another draw on their construction loan will have to deal with the bank who does not want to proceed with liens ahead of them. It will mess up the owner's otherwise unrelated project financing and for a small amount it will be far cheaper for them to settle with you rather than try to maneuver around the lien.
Lien it and let them come to you.
A signed acceptance note from the former GC would be in their favor to do as in dispute, your claim for damages would only get bigger as your costs progress upwards.
The other thing is to get paid now in materials and tools. See what they want to part with. If they are any kind on contractor they should have some kind of fleet, trucks, backhoes, compactors, tractors. Going BK and out, may as well be you who gets it.
......
When I was putting in my septic field, house under construction, this guy drives in my driveway on like a Sunday afternoon when I was operating, grading with the machine. From 80 ft away I got a bad vibe off him and immediately wanted him gone and off my driveway.
So I go over and see what he wants, trying to not let on he tripped something that rarely but very accurately gives alarm.
He sees the construction and offers to pour concrete. I thank him and say truely we are pouring everything ourselves. But he lets on as promotion, reference, that he just did the new large garage down the street, which I was aware of.
That week my portable bandsaw disappears from the unsecured new basement opening and I say a silent prayer of thank you that they did not walk in 15 ft farther and take the Sokkia site laser, that I could not afford to replace.
I make the rounds of the local pawn shops looking for my bandsaw. And think, mmm, what criminal recently visited me, I don't have the concrete guys name. I'm gonna get his name and call him, ask for my bandsaw.
So I politely visit the job down the street, at night as it happened, to get the concrete guy's name, see if the customer is happy with the work, and ask if he happened to see the guy toting my bandsaw.
The owner knew who I was and told me his story.
He was building a huge garage to go with the new house. He was part of a group that followed local cart racers around and sold parts for the cars. They raced with Yamaha 600 cc 4 cyl powered carts. garage was for the business.
So it's night and he drives me one house over, from the existing house he's living in to the new construction next door. He positions the truck so the headlights are shooting up into the air and then he says, "there's the slab".
I had no idea what he was talking about but then he explains it. There's this huge pile of topsoil and removed material and the slab the kid poured was up on top of that pile, in pieces, hard to see at night.
The garage was maybe in the range of 4000 sf, way bigger than normal. He tells me what happened. The kid showed up with one or two people short from what he said, and some of the guys were drunk. When he looked at the slab the next day it looked off, wavy, and then he put a string on it and was sliding 2 x 4 pieces tall side up under the string.
So he decided the slab was coming out, stopped the check for $5000, and called the kid and told him to not try cashing it.
Then he says, the kid's mother showed up at his house the next day with a lien on the new house and a lien for the old house he was living in. He was using the old house for financing and that stopped his project.
He consulted a lawyer who told him it would cost more to straighten this out legally than to just pay in full for the bad work. That's what he did.
. They're probably going bankruptcy route, I'm going liens route. Let it all play out. To totally lawyer up will cost me the amount I'm owed, so I took my free advice and we'll see where it takes me.
