Legal Question in Construction Law in California

That depends entirely on why they didn't give you the opportunity to complete the project. If you have breached the contract by failing to complete on time or by failing to do the work correctly, they have a duty to mitigate their damages by letting you correct and complete the work within a reasonable time. If, however, you are so late in completing the project it is deemed abandoned, and/or they reasonably believe you are incapable of completing or correcting the work that is defective or unfinished within a reasonable time, then they have the right to terminate the contract. They then have every right to hire someone else to complete it, deduct any unpaid balance they would have had to pay you if you had completed the project properly, and then charge you for the for the difference.

Every contract contains an implied promise of the parties to exercise good faith to allow the other party to perform, to refrain from interfering with the other party's performance, and to take reasonable measures to allow the purposes of the contract to be achieved for both parties. The owner is entitled to a good job finished on time, and the contractor is entitled to access to the job site and the opportunity to earn his profit from the job.

Notwithstanding this implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, owners do have lawful expectations of timely progress and completion. It is better if the contract establishes time lines, but even if it does not, the contractor is probably bordering on default if various steps take significantly longer than what a knowledgable bystander would consider a "reasonable" time.

If a situation such as yours went to court, the judge would consider the following factors in deciding who was at fault and who was entitled to damages, and how much: (1) the specific terms of the contract, especially anything bearing on time issues; (2) whether the contractor experienced unforseeable problems, such as solid rock where the parties expected gravelly loam, or strikes or shortages or earthquakes (for example); (3) whether the owner and the contractor behaved reasonably toward one another, or, on the other hand, the contractor stopped work and went AWOL or the owner made unreasonable change orders or made the job site inaccessible.

Hiring a replacement contractor to finish a job is a rather extreme remedy, but is permissible when the original contractor has abandoned or defaulted.