Power to the People

I think American democracy is quite amazing. As some of you may know, I am taking a Construction Law class. This past week we were talking about lien laws. Maybe you all know about them already, but it was a first for me. Liens are strictly an American thing. You can't find them in any other country. I'm pretty sure they started in the seventeen hundreds, but I can't be bothered to look in my notes.
This is how a lien works. The owner hires a contractor to build a building. The contractor hires a subcontractor, such as a plumber, to do the plumbing in this case. If the contractor doesn't pay the plumber, the plumber can put a lien on the property, causing the building to foreclose. The money from the foreclosure would then go to the plumber, even if it's only $1.
Now, this might seem unfair. "Why is the owner punished because of the contractor's negligence?" you may ask. Well, it has to do with a few things. First of all, in the seventeen hundreds, there was a great need for laborers to build up the nation's capital. They enacted this law to entice the laborers to work--they were worried that they wouldn't get paid. Also, a lot of the time the laborers didn't have the means to go to court or hire an attorney. This provided an easier way to get their money.
It can also be argued that it is the owner's fault for this lien because he or she hired a crummy contractor. There is a lot of competition among contractors to win the bidding for a job, and if he or she chooses an inexperienced or unethical contractor just because he or she said they would do the job for the least amount of money, well, that's their own fault.

So when I was working in the mill and if my boss didn't pay me, I could have technically put a lien on the building that the mouldings were going to, forcing the building to be sold, thereby receiving my wages from the sale of that building. Pretty cool. This gives great power to the laborer and a great incentive for owners and contractors to be ethical.



This guy is powerful.