Court Opinion

ID: 9606112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:47:10.334265+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:32.937782
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur specially, prompted by the various views expressed in M. Shapiro & Sons v. Yates Constr. Co., 140 Ga. App. 675 (231 SE2d 497) (1976), which I believe we are actually modifying in the instant decision. By the same token, a modification of North v. Waffle House, 177 Ga. App. 162 (338 SE2d 750) (1985) results.
The purpose of the bond is to free up the land for conveying or encumbering without the baggage of the lien. It operates on the title to the land, removing a barnacle. It is instigated by the landowner or the general contractor who are permitted, by statutory authority since 1953, to substitute the bond for the lien insofar as the property is concerned. It dissolves the lien and the strictly construed technical procedure carried by this extra-common-law device constructed to protect suppliers and laborers on the property in addition to the straightforward contractual cause of action on the debt. Since it eliminates that statutory creature, it wipes out also the prerequisite for its enforcement, that notice of it (the lien, not the claim for work done or materials supplied) be filed.
But obviously it does not destroy the defenses to the claim; the money is still owed. It jettisons the barnacle, baggage (i.e., procedural requirements) and all. What is left is a claim on the bond, and the statute does not require notice of it to be filed. Defenses to enforce*85ment of liens as liens would go out with the lien. Defenses on the bond could include that the work was never done or the materials never supplied, i.e., that plaintiff’s claim is outside the bond coverage to begin with. A different res is substituted, and a different procedure for reaching that res.
Decided November 12, 1987
Rehearing denied November 25, 1987
James A. Mackay, Philip B. Cordes, for appellant.
Robert A. Freyre, R. Chris Irwin, for appellee.
By choosing to substitute a bond for the lien, the owner or general contractor gives up those defenses it would have had to foreclosure of lien which relate to the technical procedure for establishing and foreclosing on a lien, but not those defenses which relate to the underlying claim itself. The establishment of the lien does not establish the claim for non-payment. The lien is just a way to collect on the claim for non-payment, providing a res against which the claim can be satisfied. The bond provides a different res. In either event, landowner or general contractor could defend and say the money is not owed it in the first place.
Why should a subcontractor who had had a lien be required to file notice of lien foreclosure per OCGA § 44-14-361.1 when the lien had already been extinguished by the owner’s filing of a bond as a substitute for the lien and the subcontractor’s other suit was not a lien foreclosure? As expressed in the opinion, no reason reveals itself.
Burgess’ lien is unenforceable not because it failed to file notice of suit, but because it was extinguished, by choice, via the owner’s filing of the surety bond in its place. Burgess’ cross-claim in DeKalb on the underlying debt was commenced after the lien had been extinguished by the owner’s choosing the option of substituting a bond for the barnacle on the property’s title.