Legal Question in Construction Law in Iowa

We have a commercial building we have been working on for a couple of years. We recently hired an electrician to do some electrical work in the building. We had asked for a contract and estimate a number of times and he failed to do so. He had started the work and knew the limit we had set for him was $12,000 from a verbal agreement previously. After working only a few days he had done a good amount of the work but had been showing up periodically and not in any predictable fashion. Soon after not having shown up for a couple of weeks we called to confirm his next work day when we were told that he was done. From the work he was not done at all he had a lot more work to do. We even took pictures of his unfinished work. We later contacted the Better Business Bureau after having paid the contractor $10,000 for the work that he had already done, and he claimed that we owed at least $2,500 more. The negotiations failed because he wanted more money and we stated that he had been paid a fair amount and we no longer wanted him to work on the building because we couldn't trust him. We even have copies of his emails from the bureau stating that he knew that he wasn't done with the work and that the limit was originally set at $12,000. This all happened in October of 2010, he has now filed a Mechanic's lien on a house that was not the commercial property he worked on just recently March 11th of 2011 to be exact. The most I could make out in the state law was that he had 90 days after the last day of work or labor to complete this filing and he obviously failed to do so as it has been nearly six months later. So our question is what do we do now? (We also don't have a problem taking this person to court because we have plenty of photographic evidence and written evidence of all the unfinished work and contradictory statements he has made.)

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