Opinion ID: 40564
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Private Works Act

Text: 14 Both questions before us require interpretation of the Private Works Act, which regulates the rights and responsibilities of persons involved in the construction and improvement of immovables. See LA.REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 94801-55, Exposé des Motifs (West 1991). The PWA protects contractors, laborers, suppliers of material and others who contribute to construction projects by granting them a privilege on the immovable to secure the price of their work and obligating owners who use a general contractor to require that contractor to record his contract and secure a surety bond guaranteeing payment to contributors. Id. An owner who fails to comply may be personally liable, even to those with whom he is not in contractual privity; and a general contractor who fails to comply may lose his privilege in the immovable. Id. 15 The rights created by the PWA extinguish after a period of time, the length of which is defined by statute and depends on a variety of factors. The present case involves the liability of general contractor Whitaker's surety, F&D, to a subcontractor, FitzGerald. Subsection 9:4813(E) states that [t]he surety's liability . . . is extinguished as to all persons who fail to institute an action asserting their claims or rights against the owner, the contractor, or the surety within one year after the expiration of the time specified in R.S. 9:4822 for claimants to file their statement of claim or privilege. § 9:4813(E). Timely institution of an action preserves the claim. 16 The first question is whether FitzGerald's filing of the involuntary petition for Whitaker's bankruptcy constitutes an action asserting its claim against F&D under subsection 9:4813(E). If it does constitute such an action, FitzGerald timely instituted its action and both of its claims are preserved. 2 If it does not, FitzGerald's claim in the Biomedical matter is preempted. To decide whether the FitzGerald's Lifeshare claim is preempted as well, we must determine if the time period specified in section 9:4822 expired, or for that matter began to run. Under subsection 9:4813(E), if the period specified in section 9:4822 never ended, the one year period never ran and FitzGerald's July 2003 adversary proceeding in the Lifeshare matter was timely and its claim preserved.