Louisiana notice of lien rights

The only form Louisiana prints, and it runs the wrong way

The private works part gives Louisiana its liens, its claims against the owner and its filing periods, and it names a stack of documents along the way. It writes out the words of one of them, and this is it. 9:4852(A) says the contractor shall deliver to the owner or his authorized agent, for such owner's or agent's signature, written notice in substantially the following form, and then prints the notice you can fill in below.

Everything else in the part is described by its contents instead. 9:4811 says a notice of contract shall be signed by the owner and contractor, shall contain a complete property description, shall identify the parties and give their mailing addresses, shall state the price and when it is payable and shall describe the work in general terms, and it never prints a sentence of it. 9:4822(D) asks a residential claimant for a notice of nonpayment setting forth the amount and nature of the obligation. 9:4804 sets out four more notices the same way, for professional consultants, lessors of movables, sellers to a subcontractor and a subcontractor suing another subcontractor. A list of contents is not a form, so none of those is here.

There is no delegated form hiding anywhere either. Searching all sixty sections of the part for set forth by, prescribed by, approved by, promulgated by and provided by the returns nothing, so there is no Louisiana equivalent of a judicial council form or a board approved form. One prescribed document in the chapter, and it is a consumer warning the contractor has to carry.

Substantially is doing its usual work in that sentence. A notice carrying this content in this order does not fail over a line break or the shape of a letterhead. It is not permission to cut the paragraph that tells the owner they can be made to pay twice, which is the only reason the notice exists.

Who owes it, and what residential home improvements actually means

The duty is on the contractor, and the person it is owed to is the homeowner or the owner's authorized agent. That is the whole of it. A subcontractor owes nobody this notice, a supplier owes nobody this notice, and there is no version of it running up the chain.

What decides whether you are inside the Subpart is 9:4851(B), and it has two tests joined together. Residential home improvements shall include all improvements or construction which enhance the value or enjoyment of any real property occupied by the owner thereof principally as a single-family dwelling or residence, if such works would entitle any person to lien rights against the property under the provisions of R.S. 9:4801 through 9:4842.

Read the first half slowly. Occupied by the owner, principally, as a single-family dwelling. So a rental is out, a duplex the owner does not live in is out, and a house somebody lives in while running a business from a back room is a question about what it is principally used as. Enhance the value or enjoyment is deliberately wide, and enjoyment is the word that sweeps in a deck, a pool or a fence that adds nothing to the appraisal.

The second half is the one people skip. The work has to be work that would entitle any person to lien rights under 9:4801 through 9:4842. If nobody on the job could claim a privilege at all, the Subpart does not reach it and the notice is not owed. In practice on a normal improvement contract somebody always could, so treat the answer as yes and hand the notice over.

There is no dollar floor anywhere in the Subpart. Kansas exempts a claim of $250 or less from its warning statement and Louisiana exempts nothing, so a small job on an owner occupied house owes the same paper as a large one.

Nonwaivable, and not a condition of the contract, both at once

Two sentences in the Subpart look like they cancel each other out, and reading them together is what tells you how this notice behaves.

9:4851(A) says the provisions of this Subpart and the notice required to be given herein shall be nonwaivable and shall be applicable to all residential home improvements. So a clause in your contract saying the owner acknowledges the notice was not required, or waives it, or has already received it when they have not, does nothing. Neither side can agree it away, and an owner who signs such a clause has given up nothing.

9:4852(B) says the notice herein required shall not be considered a condition of the construction contract. So failing to deliver it does not void the contract, does not make the job unenforceable and does not by itself destroy anybody's privilege. The lien machinery in 9:4801 through 9:4842 runs on its own filing periods and is not switched off by a missing notice here, and 9:4854 confirms it from the other side: nothing in the Subpart abrogates or limits lien rights otherwise available.

Put those together and a contractor who skipped it has a valid contract and, if they filed in time, a valid claim. What they also have is an exposure that does not appear until somebody records a lien.

9:4855 is where the consequence lives, and it does not fire until a lien does

This is the section to read before deciding the notice is paperwork. In the event any liens are perfected under the provisions of this Part against any immovable property for work or improvements covered under the provisions of this Subpart and the contractor has failed to comply with the provisions of this Subpart, such owner shall have a civil cause of action therefor, and shall be entitled to reasonable damages and attorney fees.

Three things to notice about how that is built. It is triggered by a lien being perfected, not by the missing notice, so the exposure sits dormant for as long as everyone gets paid. It is the owner's cause of action, not a public penalty, so nobody is coming to audit you. And attorney fees are in the statute, which is what turns a small dispute about a deck into something worth a lawyer's time.

The same section catches the contractor who did deliver the notice. If, having technically complied with this Subpart, the contractor has willfully, knowingly, and unlawfully falsified any statements or fraudulently obtained the signature of the owner or his agent, the owner has the same cause of action. So backdating the delivery line, or getting the signature by telling the owner it is just the last page of the contract, is treated as worse than not delivering at all.

There is a way out, and it is aimed at fixing the owner's problem rather than at excusing the paperwork. The penalty shall not apply if the contractor or subcontractor obtains a bond from a good and solvent surety in favor of the owner of the property on which the lien is placed pursuant to R.S. 9:4841, or reimburses the property owner in an amount sufficient to satisfy the lien, either in the form of a deduction from the original contract price or other refund and the owner so acknowledges receipt in writing.

The second branch is the clean one and it is the one to plan around: take the lien off the owner's back in money, as a deduction from the contract price or a refund, and get the owner's written acknowledgment of receipt. Without that written acknowledgment the branch is not satisfied, so a bank transfer with no paper is not enough.

The first branch is worth a careful word. 9:4855 points at R.S. 9:4841 for the bond, and 9:4841 as published is the concursus section: it is about the proceeding an owner or a surety convokes after the filing period has run, and about the surety depositing into the registry of the court. The section that actually gets a recorded statement of claim cancelled is 9:4835, where any interested person deposits a bond, cash or certified funds worth a hundred and twenty five percent of the claim with the recorder of mortgages and the recorder cancels the claim from his records. If you are trying to use this escape, that is the mechanism a Louisiana recorder runs, and this is a point to take to a lawyer rather than to read off a page.

What the notice tells the owner is true, and that is why it exists

The first paragraph of the prescribed wording tells the homeowner that everyone who works on the house can file a lien, that they can also recover from the owner personally, and that this can happen even if the owner has paid the contractor everything they agreed to pay. That is not a scare paragraph. It is 9:4802 written in plain English.

9:4802(A) gives five classes a claim against the owner and a claim against the contractor: subcontractors for the price of their work, laborers or employees of the contractor or a subcontractor for work performed at the site, sellers of movables that become component parts or are consumed at the site, lessors of movables leased by written contract, and professional consultants engaged by the contractor. 9:4802(B) secures every one of those claims with a privilege on the immovable.

Nothing in that section caps the owner at the contract price. In plenty of states the owner's exposure stops at what they agreed to pay the general contractor, and a homeowner who has paid in full is finished. Louisiana does not say that here, which is exactly why the legislature made somebody tell the owner in writing.

The escape is 9:4802(C), and it is the form's own paragraph (a). The owner is relieved of the claims against him and the privileges securing them when the claims arise from the performance of a contract by a general contractor for whom a bond is given and maintained as required by R.S. 9:4812 and when notice of the contract with the bond attached is properly and timely filed as required by R.S. 9:4811. 9:4812(A) says the bond shall be attached to the notice of the contract when it is filed, that the amount shall not be less than the price of the work, and that above one hundred thousand dollars it has to come from a surety company licensed in the state. 9:4811(A) says the notice is filed before the contractor begins work.

So when the form tells the owner to have a payment bond issued before the work begins and to make sure the notice of contract and the bond are recorded, it is telling them how to buy their way out of personal liability, and the deadline for that is before the first day of work. A contractor who hands this notice over at the signing has given the owner the information in time to act on it, which is the point of delivering it then rather than later.

The form tells the owner to collect lien waivers, and that is statutory

Paragraph (b) of the prescribed wording says that when your contractor is paid, make sure that all those who worked on your home or supplied materials or equipment have been paid in full, and that to do this you might want to require the contractor to give you written lien waivers signed by all those who worked on your home or supplied materials or equipment, acknowledging that they have been paid.

That is worth sitting with, because Louisiana has no prescribed lien waiver form and no section voiding a waiver signed before payment. The words on a Louisiana waiver are the whole of the agreement between the people signing it. And yet here is the legislature, inside the one form it does prescribe, telling homeowners to demand them.

The practical effect on a residential job is that the owner has been told, in writing, at the signing, by you, to ask for a signed waiver against every payment. Expect one to be put in front of you with the next cheque, and expect to be asked to collect them from your subcontractors and suppliers. Read what you sign, because there is no statute standing behind it: the Louisiana lien waiver page on this site covers what a waiver can and cannot be made to do here.

The last line of the prescribed wording before the signature is the other half of the same thought. If you have further questions, contact a lawyer. That sentence is in the statute, so it stays on the form.

Two copy duties, and the second one comes from people you have never met

9:4853(A) is the easy one. A copy of the signed notice shall be given to the owner or agent who has affixed his signature thereto. Sign it at the table, hand a copy straight back, done.

9:4853(B) is the one that catches people out. Every person who may be entitled to lien rights against the residential property for work to be done or material to be furnished pursuant to this Subpart shall be furnished a copy of the signed notice by the contractor upon request.

May be entitled to lien rights is every subcontractor, every supplier, every equipment lessor and every professional consultant on the job, and it includes people you have not hired yet on the day you sign. There is no time limit on the request and no expiry on the duty. So the signed original is a job file document, not a signing day document, and it needs to survive to the end of the work and beyond.

Scan it the day it is signed. A request under 9:4853(B) will usually arrive from somebody who is already unhappy about money, and answering it slowly is not the impression you want to give the person deciding whether to record a statement of claim.

The clocks this notice is standing in front of

Sixty days by default. 9:4822(A) says a person granted a privilege under 9:4801 or a claim and privilege under 9:4802 files a statement of claim or privilege no later than sixty days after the filing of a notice of termination of the work, or after substantial completion or abandonment if no notice of termination is filed.

Six months if the notice of contract was filed. 9:4822(B) says that where a notice of contract is properly and timely filed under 9:4811, a claimant under 9:4802 has thirty days after a notice of termination, or six months after substantial completion or abandonment where none is filed, and also has to deliver a copy of the statement to the owner if the owner's address is in the notice of contract. Filing the notice of contract is what buys the owner the 9:4802(C) release, and it lengthens the period claimants get.

Seven months for the general contractor. 9:4822(C) gives a general contractor whose privilege was preserved under 9:4811 sixty days after a notice of termination or seven months after substantial completion or abandonment.

Seventy days on residential work where nobody filed a notice of contract. 9:4822(D) lets a claimant who gives the owner a notice of nonpayment, before the sixty days run and at least ten days before filing, stretch the period to seventy days. That notice has no prescribed wording, only the requirement that it set forth the amount and nature of the obligation, which is why it is not a form on this site.

One year to sue. 9:4823(A)(2) extinguishes the claim and the privilege if the claimant does not institute an action against the owner within one year after filing the statement of claim or privilege. 9:4823(D) extinguishes a privilege if a bond is filed by the owner as provided by 9:4835.

And a separate penalty for money that went astray. 9:4856 covers a contractor or subcontractor who knowingly fails to apply money received on a job to settle the claims of sellers, laborers, subcontractors and lessors, with civil penalties of $250 to $750 where $1,000 or less was misapplied, $500 to $1,000 for every $1,000 misapplied where it was more, plus attorney fees and costs. That is a different wrong from the one in 9:4855 and it does not need a lien to exist first.

How current this wording is, and why the answer needed an enrolled bill

The wording above is the 2019 text. Act 325 of the 2019 Regular Session, House Bill No. 203 by Representative Gregory Miller, on recommendation of the Louisiana State Law Institute, rewrote this form as part of a revision of the private works part. findlaw prints the section as last updated January 01, 2023, and carries an editor's note on every section of the Subpart saying that in Subpart G, only R.S. 9:4852 was affected by the 2019 Revision.

The old version of the notice was an owner acknowledgment written in legal register, with numbered paragraphs the owner signed under a line saying they had read the above statement and fully understood its contents. The 2019 act struck all of it and put the plain English block in its place. The heading, the delivery line, the two signature rules and their captions are the only lines that carried through untouched.

That matters for a practical reason rather than a historical one. An enrolled Louisiana bill sets deletions in struck through type and additions underscored, and it says so in a footer on every page. Those marks are drawn rectangles in the PDF, not font styling, so every ordinary text extractor throws them away and hands back the repealed paragraphs and the current paragraphs run together as one long form. It reads perfectly and it is wrong. The capture script for this page reads the marks out of the drawing layer instead, which is how the comparison was done and why the page can say the two editions agree character for character rather than approximately.

Questions people ask

Once the job is running and you are getting paid on it, the paperwork that comes next is the waiver: see the Louisiana statutory lien waiver forms, and conditional vs unconditional lien waiver for which of the two to sign.