Opinion
X07HHDCV166078057S
10-18-2017
Alina Wegrzyniak v. Hanley Construction, LLC
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION ON MECHANIC'S LIEN DUE PROCESS CHALLENGE
Thomas G. Moukawsher, J.
Connecticut law adequately protects those faced with mechanic's liens. Therefore, it doesn't violate the Fourteenth Amendment's ban on states depriving people of property " without due process of law." Mechanic's liens derive from the lienor's substantial rights in the property at issue. They are relatively easy to calculate because they must be based on a specific agreement. And the law provides a remedy to discharge bogus liens speedily. Therefore, allowing them to attach without a hearing and requiring an application to discharge them is constitutional.
Faced with a mechanic's lien in this case, the Wegrzyniaks disagree. They rely on the 1991 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Connecticut's pre-hearing attachment statute on due process grounds in Connecticut v. Doehr . But the most important thing for this case about Doehr is Chief Justice Rehnquist's partial concurrence. There, he usefully distinguished the pre-hearing attachment in that case from the mechanic's lien in this one. The Connecticut attachment statute in Doehr allowed attachments without contested hearings for cases unconnected to any pre-existing interest in the liened land and for sums--such as those claimed in personal injury cases--that were often highly subjective. Chief Justice Rehnquist underlined that mechanics are treated differently because they contribute improvements to the land they lien that they cannot simply take back:
501 U.S. 1, 111 S.Ct. 2105, 115 L.Ed.2d 1 (1991).
Materialman's and mechanic's lien statutes award an interest in real property to workers who have contributed their labor, and to suppliers who have furnished material, for the improvement of the real property. Since neither the labor nor the material can be reclaimed once it has become a part of the realty, this is the only method by which workmen or small businessmen who have contributed to the improvement of the property may be given a remedy against a property owner who has defaulted on his promise to pay for the labor and the materials. To require any sort of a contested court hearing or bond before the notice of lien takes effect would largely defeat the purpose of these statutes.
Id. at 28.
The chief justice believed this was why in 1973 the Supreme Court summarily upheld the rejection of a notice-based due process challenge to a mechanic's lien statute in Spielman-Fond, Inc. v. Hanson's, Inc.
379 F.Supp. 997 (Ariz. 1973), aff'd, 417 U.S. 901, 94 S.Ct. 2596, 41 L.Ed.2d 208 (1974).
Thus, mechanic's liens are most unlike the attachments considered in Doehr because mechanics improve land and by statute acquire an interest in the land they improve. The liens may be impairing one interest in land but they are protecting another that derives from the sweat and material the mechanic has irretrievably invested in the land.
General Statutes § 49-33 recognizes that property interest. For this reason in 1993 in PDS Engineering & Construction, Inc. v. Double RS, Judge Satter, writing for this court, rejected the same key challenge the Wegrzyniaks bring again now:
The observation of the Doehr court that the substantial interest of the mechanic's lienor in the property subject to the lien justifies less stringent due process requirements invites the inference that a hearing prior to filing is not constitutionally mandated.
Our Supreme Court would likely agree with Judge Satter and nearly has already. In 1993 in Red Rooster Construction Co. v. River Association, Inc. the court upheld the mechanic's lien statute in the face of a due process claim stemming from the statute's lack of notice to creditors. It did so emphasizing again that the mechanic had " preexisting interests in the property at issue."
Id.
Still, the Wegrzyniaks say the statutory scheme is unconstitutional and void for three defects: 1. it allows Hanley Construction (the mechanic here) to deprive the Wegryzyniaks of their property without requiring a hearing first; 2. it allows Hanley to wait a year to foreclose on the lien, and; 3. the Wegryzyniaks must meet a heavy burden to discharge the lien.
Doehr, of course, was all about the pre-hearing deprivation issue. It held that Connecticut's attachment statute impaired a property interest without due process. But in that case, with that attachment, the property impairment didn't necessarily have anything to do with the property at issue--it didn't necessarily involve a claim derived from a mechanic's property interest in the land. Here, as the chief justice pointed out in Doehr, if the land is gone the mechanic's work is gone with it. Here, if the state will not protect the offended mechanic it might equally be claimed that too much of a burden is placed on the mechanic's right to secure payment, unfairly depriving the mechanic of its property. Faced with mechanic's liens, property owners may still use their property. Mechanics deprived of their labor and materials can't get them back. They may find themselves without the money to pay their workers and facing the state's wrath for that. They may face angry suppliers who will strangle their livelihood by refusing supplies. Against this backdrop, with competing property interests at stake, allowing a lien prior to a hearing provides enough process to satisfy the constitution--at least so long as property owners can promptly be heard about bogus liens.
And because they can be promptly heard about bogus liens, they are afforded due process. General Statutes § 49-35a allows a property owner to apply to discharge the lien and to get a hearing after as little as four-days notice to the mechanic. Property owners might complain if prompt hearings aren't held when they ask for them, but the Wegrzyniaks can't complain about that here. They were heard as soon as they were ready to be heard and they were given a prompt ruling, reducing the amount of the lien at issue. The fact that the lien might have continued in a larger amount if the Wegrzyniaks did nothing doesn't change anything. This concern is outweighed by the important property interest being protected and the speed with which they may have the lien addressed by the courts.
The relative ease with which courts may determine the correct lien amount is another due process safeguard for those affected by mechanic's liens. Unlike the subjective amounts often at issue in a prejudgment attachment case, mechanics performing home improvement work on real estate must by virtue of General Statutes § 20-429 have a written contract. In the present commercial case a written contract existed too. Most important, General Statutes § 49-33(a) only allows mechanic's liens to the extent they are justified " by virtue of an agreement." Establishing the contents of a usually written agreement is far less burdensome than determining the value of an attachment to secure a possible judgment for personal injury pain and suffering or similar claims.
And this important distinction undercuts the Wegrzyniaks' claim that they are deprived of due process because they must prove the lien invalid by " clear and convincing evidence" under General Statutes § 49-35b. Here, as in most cases, the correct amount of the lien was easy to establish. The lien exceeded the contract amount. The lien was reduced. The parties stipulated to the facts that justified the reduction. In many cases proof will likely be just as easy to find. The correct amount of the lien is a simple matter of determining the contract amount and subtracting the amounts paid. Thus, the burden of proving the invalidity by clear and convincing evidence is not great. In any case, here the court has already held that the Wegrzyniaks in trying to get rid of the entire lien haven't even met the lesser burden of a preponderance of the evidence. Therefore, at least in this case, the burden of proof would make no difference.
Allowing a mechanic a lien without a hearing doesn't deprive the owner of the liened land of due process. The balance of the parties' competing interest in the property combined with the relative ease of discharging bogus liens makes the process fair enough to pass constitutional muster. Therefore, to the extent the Wegrzyniaks base their application to discharge the mechanic's liens in this case on the ground that they are void as unconstitutional, the application is denied.