Title: DJ Fair Lumber Co. v. Karlin

State: kansas

Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court

Document:

199 Kan. 366 (1967)
430 P.2d 222
D.J. FAIR LUMBER CO., Appellant,
v.
NORMAN J. KARLIN, LUCILLE KARLIN and JOE HISH, Appellees.
No. 44,730

Supreme Court of Kansas.
Opinion filed July 12, 1967.
H. Newlin Reynolds, of Hutchinson, argued the cause and was on the brief for appellant.
Victor D. Goering, of Hutchinson, argued the cause, and John F. Hayes and R.J. Gilliland, of Hutchinson, were with him on the brief for appellees.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
FATZER, J.:
At issue is the validity of a subcontractor's mechanic's lien statement for materials supplied in the erection of a certain building, and whether the statement may be amended pursuant to K.S.A. 60-1105 (b) to supply a verification.
The defendants, Norman J. Karlin and Lucille Karlin, are the owners of the real property on which the building was erected. Joe Hish, the defendant-contractor, entered into a contract with the Karlins to erect the building. The plaintiff, D.J. Fair Lumber Co., was the subcontractor which furnished the materials in the erection of the building.
On February 26, 1965, the plaintiff filed a statement purporting to be a mechanic's lien with the clerk of the district court, which was signed and acknowledged as follows:
"STATE OF KANSAS, COUNTY OF RENO, ss:
The parties concede the lien statement was filed in the requisite statutory time; that the plaintiff mailed a copy of the lien statement to the defendants Karlin by certified mail, return receipt requested; that the description of the real property upon which the lien was claimed was properly described in the lien statement and in the petition seeking foreclosure; that the account was properly attached, and that the plaintiff did under a subcontract with Joe Hish furnish materials which were delivered upon the premises and actually used thereon in the construction of the building.
On February 25, 1966, the plaintiff filed its petition to foreclose the mechanic's lien. In preparing its petition the plaintiff apparently noted Reeves v. Kansas Coop. Wheat Mk't Ass'n, 136 Kan. 306, 15 P.2d 446, where it was held that a lien statement which was "acknowledged" instead of "verified" was invalid, and Ekstrom United Supply Co. v. Ash Grove Lime & Portland Cement Co., 194 Kan. 634, 400 P.2d 707, which held that the failure of a subcontractor to verify its lien statement pursuant to G.S. 1961 Supp. 60-1403, was fatal to recovery, since paragraph 7 of the petition states:
On March 3, 1966, the defendants Karlin filed their motion to dismiss the plaintiff's action for the reason the petition and exhibits showed affirmatively upon their face the lien statement in question contained no verification whatsoever but was "acknowledged" in lieu thereof, which rendered the statement fatally defective and not subject to amendment.
In a memorandum opinion the district court concluded that, lacking verification, the lien statement was vitally defective, and not being corrected within the statutory period for obtaining a lien, the defect went to the whole of the claim and the statement could not be amended pursuant to K.S.A. 60-1105 (b). It sustained *369 the Karlins' motion to dismiss, being of the opinion the subcontractor was not entitled to a personal judgment against the property owners.
The plaintiff concedes the lien statement was not "verified" but instead was only "acknowledged," and limits its argument to whether the district court erred in refusing to permit the plaintiff to amend the lien statement pursuant to K.S.A. 60-1105 (b) by properly verifying it to conform with K.S.A. 60-1102 and 60-1103.
Was the lien statement subject to amendment by permitting the plaintiff to verify it one day less than one year after it was filed? We think not. K.S.A. 60-1102 expressly requires that a mechanic's lien statement shall be verified by the claimant when it is filed. Here the lien statement was not verified at all; it was only acknowledged. It is obvious that an acknowledgment does not constitute a verification nor even an attempted one. An acknowledgment shows, merely prima facie, that an instrument was duly executed, whereas a verification is an affidavit attached to a statement as to the truth of the matters therein set forth. On this subject, Mr. Justice Fontron, in his dissenting opinion in Ekstrom United Supply Co. v. Ash Grove Lime & Portland Cement Co., supra, stated the following, which the court adopts:
In the Ekstrom case it was held that the failure of the subcontractor to verify its lien statement in accordance with the mandatory provisions of the statute was fatal to recovery, and in the opinion it was said:
In Reeves v. Kansas Coop. Wheat Mk't Ass'n, 136 Kan. 306, 15 P.2d 446, the action was to enforce a thresher's lien authorized by R.S. 58-204, now K.S.A. 58-204, and it was said:
In Phillips, Mechanics' Liens (3d ed.), p. 637, § 366, it was said:
In Logan-Moore Lumber Co. v. Foley, 181 Kan. 984, 317 P.2d 467, reference was made to G.S. 1949, 60-1405, providing in substance that in case an action was brought, any lien statement may be amended by leave of court in the furtherance of justice as pleadings may be in any matter, except as to the amount claimed, and it was said:
In Safford & Son Lumber Co. v. Kerley, 184 Kan. 59, 334 P.2d 334, it was said that to permit "amendment" or "reformation" after the statutory period for filing a mechanic's lien would place the court in the position of creating a lien, where none was in effect, and it was held:
The plaintiff contends that the cases of Logan-Moore Lumber Co. v. Foley, supra, and Logan-Moore Lumber Co. v. Black, 185 Kan. 644, 347 P.2d 438, which held there can be no amendment to create a lien where none was created by the statement when it was filed, were decided pursuant to G.S. 1949, 60-1405 which has since been repealed and replaced by K.S.A. 60-1105 (b) liberalizing the district court's discretion to amend, by deleting from the old statute which permitted amendments only "as pleadings may be in any matter." K.S.A. 60-1105 is a part of the new code of civil procedure, and provides, in part:
Commenting upon this section, Judge Gard, in Kansas Code of Civil Procedure, Annotated, p. 661, states:
However, Judge Gard continues:
This court has always liberally construed our mechanic's lien statutes, once a lien has attached, but it has consistently held that a mechanic's lien can only be acquired in the manner and upon the conditions prescribed in the statute; that the verification prescribed by the statute is an essential and fundamental step; that *372 without such verification the lien claimant obtains nothing, and that the right to claim and enforce such a lien, being statutory, compliance with the statute is a prerequisite. That being the case, this court is of the opinion the language used in K.S.A. 60-1105 (b) is not sufficiently different from that used in the prior statute (G.S. 1949, 60-1405) to permit amendment of a vitally defective lien statement after the statutory period in which to file such lien has expired.
The plaintiff's lien statement, lacking verification, created no lien. The acknowledgment added nothing to its validity. Paragraph 7 of the plaintiff's petition requested the court to amend and perfect a lien which was imperfect on its face. The exercise of the power of amendment conferred by 60-1105 (b) is limited by the possibility of injustice to either the defendant or to third persons, and the burden is upon the claimant to show the proposed amendment would not work an injustice. The power is further limited where the proposed amendment would evade or defeat the operation of statutes  here, 60-1102 and 60-1103  since no court has power to nullify statutes valid on their face. (Atkinson v. Woodmansee, 68 Kan. 71, 74 Pac. 640.) In short, the plaintiff's proposed amendment would not have been "in the furtherance of justice" since the amendment sought would have had the effect of creating a lien where none previously existed, and this, as we have seen, would evade or defeat the operation of 60-1102 and 60-1103.
In view of the foregoing, we hold that the acknowledgment of plaintiff's mechanic's lien statement was not a verification or an attempted verification as required by K.S.A. 60-1102 and 60-1103, and since the same was not corrected within the statutory period for obtaining a valid lien, the lien statement was vitally defective when filed, and it cannot now be amended to permit its verification. The district court did not err in dismissing the plaintiff's action.
The judgment is affirmed.