Legal Question in Construction Law in Louisiana

My partner and I owned a general contracting company for two years in La. In that time we started working for an investment firm from California whose intent it was to buy, rennovate, and sell residential real estate. We were the contractors. Almost immediately the funding that we were assured would be rapid and smooth came to a slow crawl, twice allowing us to backlog over 100k in debt to suppliers and contractors halting the construction process. The construction budget allowances for materials that were given to them were ignored, and after the contracts were signed they hired a designer which anybody knows adds cost through materials, time for decision making, and changed the predetermined scope of work on the projects. This projected 8-12 week project ended up dragging on for over a year and a half. The gross material overage on a shoestring budget to begin with, and quadrupled overhead costs due to untimely funding caused the entire job to run over almost $75,000. This 75 k was spead out between 5 duplex custom condominiums with average square footages of 3800-4600 square feet....so $7,500/unit for all 10 units. They were actually further over budget than that as we had to take profit from other jobs to supplement subs, employees, and keep materials on site during constant funding lapses. The budget overages combined were presented to them in the form of a "cost to complete". They accepted and paid the subs, suppliers direct in exchange for lien releases. We finished and had no liens on the properties, as well as all final building permits passed. The certificate of occupancy dates range from 14 to 20 months ago, which is defined as "substantial completion" in our contracts. From that time we have a 1 year warranty on the home, which has now passed on all properties. These houses have now sat vacant for 12-20 months and are not being upkept or properly maintained on a very prominent strip in New Orleans. He has finally started selling some of them (they were overpriced) and has now demanded that we take care of punch lists on all properties from the inspection response as he sells them, even though we had this conversation with him over 3 months ago (while his warranty was still in place) and gave him the option to pay for home inspections himself, and we would take care of the list as we could get to them. He said that he would get the inspections and forward us a list. He did nothing but allow his warranties to expire while on his boat in California. We notified him his his warranty is up after recieving a punch list yesterday and he has since threatened legal recourse on the ground that these were fixed construction contracts that have a 75k overage, or as he says, unaccounted for funds. We know we are in the right, and any other contractor would've taken the 10k contract penalty and walked, but I don't know how the law works in this Louisiana in this complicated matter. The way we feel about the punch lists is that we either do them all (10 over the course of who knows when) and waste more time and no doubt more money and just get him out of our hair forever and avoid the hassle of court....or tell him what we really think and we'll meet him in court. We now have our own real estate investment firm that has been in business for over a year and growing every quarter and just see him and those projects as a waste of a year and a half of our lives, and just knowing that he is going to waste more of our time either through punch lists or court angers us in the deepest of ways. I just need a push of confidence that I do have a leg to stand on in this matter and should not be "bullied" by threats of legal recourse, or are we in the wrong here? Do we have counter recourse if he does take us to court and loses...i.e. time, money wasted in court, lost wages, etc...? Any help in the form of direction or advice would be greatly appreciated.


Asked on 8/26/09, 7:45 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Hardy Parkerson Retired Attorney; now Law Professor

Dear LawGuru Friend,

Your questions is a long one, so I suggest

you e-mail me your phone number and I shall

be happy to call you and discuss this matter

with you. I will print out your question and

study it while I am awaiting your reply/resonse.

Although I am now retiried from the practice of law;

nevertheless, I am still devoted to the law and to

my lifetime calling of helping people. There will

be no charge, of course, for my assistance.

Looking forward to hearing back from you,

I am

Sincerely,

Hardy Parkerson, J.D.

Lake Charles, LA

Graduate, Tulane Law School - Class of 1966

E-mail address: [email protected]

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Answered on 9/06/09, 5:21 am


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