Law Suits

Lawsuits

This is a very good point of discussion for most of us in business for ourselves.
In my experience to date, the best course of action to take is a Pro-Active approach versus a Re-Active one.
The best advice I have to give is at the signing of a contract that there be an "Arbitration Clause" signed by the Contractor and the Customer. To my knowledge this is an agreement on the part of both parties "Not to Sue" but to have any disputes be settled by a "Third Party Professional Arbitrator."
In our case, we would have any disputes resolved thru arbitration services as provided by our membership with the BBB. It had been mentioned in the forum before that many people here do not feel the BBB is worth paying the membership for and I do not agree for several reasons, but that is a whole other subject.
Consider this, "It is like for those of us that choose to ride motorcycles,we fit in one of two categories, them that have crashed and those that will crash!!"

Lawsuits

"Is there anyway around them"

Yep. Make everything clear and in-writing up front. If there's a dispute, be polite but firm.

"it seems like our industry is dealing with them all the time."

Not us. People will make fun of our contracts, but we've been in business for 17 years and our business has never been on either side of a lawsuit.

Tim

The topic is law suits. A GC that I sub to sometimes asked me this I guess because I'm older. I haven't a clue to the answer and we'er all treading on some new ground due to the storms.
A guy in a condo stiffs you to the tune of 8K. He owns the condo but leases the grounds. You put a lien on the condo. The condo is condemned due to storm damage and the guy is going to collect ins. for his loss.
Will the ins. company do a title search prior to disbursing the funds to the deadbeat? Will you have to find out who his ins. co. is and try to chase them down before he gets his check? Your attorney has already advised you that a lawsuit will cost you more than you will recover. It has been 3 yrs. and you have recovered from the loss, should you just walk and figure that he will get his when he slowly turns on a spit in Hell.?

Mike, I know a guy that lived in this condo and had another friend looking to buy there last year.
It works like this. A developer corp buys the land, erects the building and sells the condos. Individual titles are issued for each unit but not for any rights to the land underneath it, that is leased. A lot of mobile home parks are set up this way as well. In this instance a parking space was include in the basic lease with additionals costing $50 a month, dockage was $7 a foot.
In this case the developer corp. has retained the land and the condo owners have ins. to recover their losses but no one will ever be able to buy that particular condo again. I suppose the condo titles wind up in the dead title box until someone cleans the box. I don't think that ins. companies have an obligation to do a title search prior to settlement and without a title transfer or search the lien will go undiscovered.