Webinar: Stop Payment Notices in California — Another Way for Subcontractors & Suppliers to Get Paid

You want to use every available remedy at your disposable to get paid for the work you do. In addition to a mechanics Lien, subcontractors and suppliers can also get paid by using a Stop Payment Notice.

In this free webinar, construction attorney Cathleen Curl will cover the in’s and out’s of using a Stop Payment Notice to obtain payment.

What we’ll cover:

• What is a Stop Payment Notice and who can use them?
• The rules for effectively using a Stop Payment Notice
• How to enforce a Stop Payment Notice

Transcript

Seth Bloom (12:07)

Hello everyone. Welcome to the webinar. We’re just going to give everyone a few minutes to get in the room. Thank you. Just going to give everyone an opportunity to get in the room. We’ll give everyone about another 20 or 30 seconds. We have quite a few participants signing on right now. All right, well, let’s get started. Uh, I’m Seth bloom, I’m senior director of attorney services at Levelset. We’re based in new Orleans, Louisiana. Uh, we’re putting on these webinars, uh, on a weekly basis. So we hope you can join these today. We have, uh, Cathleen curl from the law offices of Cathleen, Carl. She has a webinar on stop payment notices, another way for subs, subcontractors, and suppliers to get paid. So we’re really excited about this. If you have any questions, please post your questions and we’ll have Cathleen answer them live. Or later you can always go to the expert center within the attorney services and post a question to Cathleen or any other California lawyer, Cathleen practices out of the Bay area. But at the same time, she handles cases all over the state of California. So Cathleen, thank you so much and it’s all yours.

Cathleen Curl: (13:51)

Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. I want to talk to you today about stop payment notices. This used to be called stop notices for those old timers like me, they changed the name because people kept getting that term confused with, um, stop, uh, stop work orders, red tags, and other words. So they made it clearer to say stop payment notices. So if somewhere along the line, I slipped back into the old terminology. That’s why now you hear a lot about mechanics lanes in construction, uh, but stop payment notices are another way for contractors to get paid.

Cathleen Curl:  (14:37)

It’s really just another arrow for your quiver. What I want you guys to do is I want you to get into the practice of thinking about how many things, how many ways can I get paid? So you may have, in one case, you may have the ability to record a mechanics, lien file a stop notice, make a payment bond claim, make a licensed bond claim against the contractor who hired you, um, and still have breach of contract rights. So you want to put your hands in as many pockets as possible because you don’t care who pays you, right? You want to make sure somebody pays you as long as you’re getting paid.

Cathleen Curl: (15:23)

All right. So let’s talk about what a stop payment notice is. Stop payment notice is a hold or a freeze on the construction funds. I like to think of it as the show me the money. This isn’t different than a mechanics lien because a mechanics lien, as you all probably remember, attaches to the dirt, to the land itself. And the remedy that a mechanics lien claimant has is to order the property sold, to satisfy the debt. Well, the stop payment notice comes at it from a different direction. The stop payment notice attaches to the funds that construction funds that haven’t yet been spent. So if you’re a successful stop, notice payment, stop payment notice claimant, you actually would order the owner or the lender to pay you the money that you’re owed out of those construction funds. Now the stop payment notice is generally found more. It’s more common on public jobs than it is on private jobs, but it is also available on private jobs. And I’ve given you the code sections here for the public works and the private works.

Cathleen Curl: (16:46)

So who is entitled to do a stop payment notice? Well, it’s really, especially for the protection of use subcontractors and suppliers out there. It includes people who provide work that you’ve been authorized to do by a general contractor, by a subcontractor, an architect or project manager, um, or pretty much anybody else who has charge of all or part of a project. And now this could also include laborers. Although I don’t think in my many years I’ve ever seen a labor put a stop payment notice on, but it is theoretically possible. Now a general contractor can also serve a stop payment notice on a construction lender, but only for a private project. Um, I rarely see that done. It’s mostly for you, subcontractors and suppliers. If you are ever in an owner builder situation, anyone who contracts with owner is considered a subcontractor and they can give a stop payment notice as well. But again, mainly for you subs and suppliers out there.

Cathleen Curl: (18:01)

Now there’s some ground rules for being able to use a preliminary notice. I it’s proved being able to use a stop payment notice. The first thing is you have to give a preliminary notice to the owner, the general contractor and the lender, if there is one. So this is one more reason why you should be doing your preliminary notices on every job. People ask me, when should I do a preliminary notice what jobs and I say, basically, whatever job you want to get paid on, because it’ll give you the maximum potential for getting paid now on a private job. If you’re going to do a stop payment notice, you need to include a bond it’s equal to 125% of the claim amount. And that makes it mandatory for the lender or the owner to withhold those funds. Otherwise the lender has a discretion, whether or not to freeze the funds.

Cathleen Curl: (19:04)

And we all know that if you serve something on a bank and it’s discretionary and they’re probably not going to do it. Having said that though, I do want to also mention, sometimes you can put one on, if you just want to make a statement, you just want to let the owner or the lender know that there are issues. You could go ahead and serve a stop payment notice even without that bond, just to sort of be a wakeup call and say, Hey, I’m out of here. I haven’t been paid. Um, you guys should be taking notice of this and taking some action. I also want to mention that the cost of the bond for a stop notice, um, is not 125% of the claim. Um, usually it’s a very small percentage of the claim and it would be based on your relationship with your bonding company. So if you have a good relationship with a bonding company, they, I I’m told by my clients that they actually charge less. So, um, don’t think that it’s, that you have to put up that amount of money to pay for the premium. It’s relatively inexpensive. If you’re working on a public job though, you don’t need a bond to go with it. That’s just for a private box for a private project.

Cathleen Curl: (20:26)

When do you do these stop payment notices? Well, it’s the same timeframe as a mechanics lien. So if you’ve learned the mechanics lean times, it’s the same for a stop notice. Now, if you’re a sub or supplier, this means 30 days after the recording date of a notice of completion or a notice of cessation. If there is one, now you generally find notices of completions on public jobs. I rarely see them on private jobs. In which case, if there is no notice of completion, then you need to file your stop notice within 90 days after substantial completion, acceptance or sustation of the whole project. And notice I’ve said the whole project. That means not just your work. So for instance, if you are a supplier or a subcontractor that comes on early, um, my steel subcontractors, my framers, those kinds of people that are on early, you may have much longer to put your stock payment notice on than you think, because it’s not just 90 days from when you have been paid. It would be 90 days from when the whole project is done.

Cathleen Curl:  (21:46)

A little known fact too, is that if you pay $10 with your, when you serve your stop payment, notice the public entity will give you notice when the notice of completion has been recorded. And as you all know that notice of completion starts the clock ticking to enforce your stock payment. Notice if there is one, but again, if there isn’t one it’s 90 days from completion of the entire project. Now sometimes the stop payment notice doesn’t work because all the money has been spent. So even if you timely serve a stop payment notice, uh, if there’s no money left the lenders dispersed at all, then unfortunately your stop payment notice has no effect. What I generally like to do though, is I like to call the lender. If I know who the lender is or the owner, and I asked them, Hey, we’re owed money.

Cathleen Curl:  (22:44)

Um, can you tell me if all of the funds have been dispersed now? Sometimes they’ll say, Oh, we can’t tell you exactly how much. And I tell them I don’t, I don’t care. I’m not asking for an exact amount. I just need to know is the money all gone? And they’ll generally tell you that. So then, you know whether or not it’s actually worth it to go ahead and do, unlike a mechanics lien, a stop payment notice is not premature. If it’s filed before you stop work on the project or before the payment due date. So what, what does this mean? Well, effectively, this means if you’re owed money and you’ve heard through the grapevine, that there are some issues you have, you’re really worried about getting paid. Then you can go ahead and put your stop payment notice on, even though you haven’t finished all of your work, that’s different than mechanics lien, you have to finish.

Cathleen Curl:  (23:40)

Your work will be done. Uh, or as far as you’re going to go on the, before, you can put the lien on. So this is good interim stages. You can, if, if a project is going bad, you could have multiple stop payment notices just in case you get to that area. You may have put one on you put one on you get paid, you go farther. You realize they’re still having trouble. You could do another stop payment notice. And as many times as you need to do that now, how do you serve a stop payment notice you don’t record a stop payment notice. Um, you don’t file it with the court. It’s actually served on the lender, okay. Or the, the owner, whoever is the holder of the money. The best methods to serve are by certified mail return receipt requested, or you can have an actual process server serve the actual dispersing agent or lender.

Cathleen Curl:  (24:50)

Now you may need to make some phone calls to get information on who and where to serve the stop payment. Notice for instance, stop payment notices on public jobs in San Francisco are currently served on the mayor’s office, not the public works department. So in theory, if you serve the public works department, because you thought, Oh, it’s a public job. It’s not going to who has the money. So that could be an issue for you later as to the validity of your stop payment notice. So again, call for instance, the school district. Um, if up here there’s a lot of work going on on public schools, elementary, high school, um, and some junior colleges. So I generally will call up the high school and I will say, I’ve got to stop notice who and where do you want me to serve it on? Now, sometimes you have to make a few phone calls, they’ll say, Oh, I don’t know.

Cathleen Curl:  (25:50)

I’ll have to find out that information for you, but that part is free. You can have your office staff call and find out. Now make sure of course that you’re writing down. Who told you what, um, you know, this was, they’ll tell you to serve it on the superintendent. Um, and here’s his name and here’s his or her, uh, address and write that down. Who told you what? Because in case it’s wrong later, you’ll be able to show who told you that information. The last pretty good about letting a contractor rely on information that they’re given by others. So you can’t just serve any old branch. For instance, if you know that the bank of America is the lending agent, you’ve got to find out which branch is actually dispersing, that if you’re in Northern California, that branch may be in Southern California or vice versa.

Cathleen Curl:  (26:44)

Um, so sometimes that’s a little tricky. I have had cases where the bank bank, number one that issued the loan was bought out by bank number two. So again, you’ll, you’ll need to make some calls and find out where to serve that. Um, you can also serve at the law, allows you to serve it by personal service, by walking over and handing it to somebody. I don’t recommend that though, because that’s harder to prove they could argue later that you haven’t been served. I’d rather have that green card back, or I’d rather have a declaration from my process servers, proving that that was the stop payment notice was served.

Cathleen Curl:  (27:28)

Okay. So now we’re going to see, I know you’re all anxiously awaiting what a stop payment notice looks like. So that’s what I want to show you now. Okay. This is what a stop payment notice looks like. Okay. It’s obviously a piece of paper. It contains pretty much the same information that you’d have for a mechanics lien, but it asks for a little bit more information regarding the, the accounting, how much work has been done. So up here, you’ve got to, um, I hope you can all see my cursor. So this would be where you would put the, um, the person that you’re serving. I wouldn’t just put, for instance, um, city of Los Angeles, I would put an actual person the title and the address on where that’s going, and then you’ve got a project and that’s the name and location of the project.

Cathleen Curl:  (28:32)

Usually that’s taken right from your contract. If there’s a project number, you can put it on many projects, as we all know, don’t have necessarily a number. This isn’t really meant for your internal project number, it’s really meant so that someone looking at this, the lender can say, what project were you working on that you want us to withhold the money on? And the claimant is you urinate and address. And then just a general description of the kind of work you did if you were a, a plumber. Um, if you were an electrician, electrical work, whatever that is, as I say, you don’t have to go into too much detail. Then the next line is for the benefit of, or at the request of, and that’s the person, uh, it says person, but it’s really meant for the name of the company that hired you.

Cathleen Curl:  (29:24)

Um, and this again is for public works. So, and then you need to put in some money information. So you have to say the, the value of the work, uh, the total contract price, then value of that already done or furnished is so sometimes as I mentioned before, you can put a stop payment on before you’re done. So in that case, these two numbers would be different. If you’ve already finished the project, those two numbers should be the same. And then the next line here is, okay, how much have you been paid or credited if there’s a credit that leaves a balance due of that’s, how much you’re owed plus interest. The current legal rate of interest in California, I would argue here is 10%. And then this is the date that you want the interest to start from. I generally, for the interest date, like to include the date when the first part of that money was owed.

Cathleen Curl:  (30:25)

So if you’re owed multiple payments put in, when that first payment was owed as that interest date, and then you date it, you sign it. This is second line here is usually for the title. If you’re a president or whatever. Um, and then it’s verified. So a stop payment notice is not notarized, but there is a verification which says all of the information that you’re giving up above here is true and correct under penalty of perjury. That’s the most important part because they want to make sure that you’re not just making up numbers. If you’re owed monies on multiple projects, by the same contractor, you can’t lump them together in your stop payment notice here, you have to do them separately. So it would just be for this project. Okay. Now I’m going to show you the next one for this is for a private work, pretty much the same. Um, it’s got the same information here to project claimant, um, who you furnished it to the type of work. And again, this accounting information, this accounting information, as I mentioned is not on the mechanics lien. They just want to know the total stop payment notice because these lenders are often banks. They want to know this accounting information and they’ve got a pretty strong lobby. So they’ve made it part of the law to have that information that you’re required to give.

Cathleen Curl:  (32:17)

All right. Now what if you get partially paid? What if you get a payment after you put your stop payment on, yay. That’s what you want. So don’t just release your stop payment. Notice there’s a partial release of the bond that you can do it and make sure that you’re doing this only after the check has cleared, because we all know there may be cases where someone will stop payment on a check or the check will bounce. So once that is done, then you can go ahead and partially release. Now a general contractor can bond around your stock payment notice, and don’t be intimidated by a general contractor who says, Oh, it’s useless to put a stop payment notice on. I’m just going to bond around it. You don’t care. What happens when they bond around the lease is it allows the money to be released to the general contractor, but it transfers the obligation to the bonding company. So you’ll just get paid by the bonding company instead of the disperser of the funds. So that’s fine. Um, again, you don’t care as long as you’re getting paid. All right. And so let me show you what it looks like to have a partial release of lean and a full release of lien.

Speaker 1: (33:50)

This is what a partial release looks like. It’s good for either public or private works. Um, so you would fill this out here. This is how much partial payment is reflected, leaving a balance due of, and this gives you the information about the initial stop payment notice. Here’s the name of the general contractor? Here’s the amount and the important line. The bottom line, the balance of X number of dollars is still in full force and effect. And what I generally recommend you do is that you fill this out, give it to the person who paid you, the entity that paid you so that they can give it to either the general contractor or the owner. Now, if you’re totally susceptible, if you’ve been totally successful and you have been paid in full then, and only then would you release your stop payment notice here? So this is for good, invaluable consideration. This is the information about the public entity. This is the information about the stop payment notice originally. Um, and this would reflect the total payment. And again, I would suggest that you give that to the person who paid you so that they can transfer it to the owner or to the lender or general contractor.

Cathleen Curl: (35:38)

Um, let’s go ahead and get out of this. There we go. Okay. So we’ve talked about, uh, Oh, enforcement of stock payment. Notice it’s not enough just to put the stock notice on like a mechanics lien, you have to file a lawsuit to enforce your stop payment notice. So their rules, I like to tell people, just think of it like a mechanics lien. You actually have a little bit more time to enforce a stop notice. Um, but if you don’t, after the 90 day period is up. If you don’t fell student time, the money will be released by the lender. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid here. So the claimant must file a lawsuit at any time after 10 days, 10 days after you filed a stop notice that’s to give people time to sort of assimilate and see what they’re going to do with it. And then suit must be filed within 90 days after expiration of the period with a win within which the stop payment notice must be given. So that’s a mouthful to have to say, think of it like a mechanics lien though. Think about 90 days and you’ll, you’ll still have enough time. You also have to file a notice of commencement within five days after filing the lawsuit, but that’s generally something that your, um, that your attorney will do for you.

Cathleen Curl:  (37:13)

Now, when does a stop payment notice work best when it’s a public project or a large commercial project with a dispersing agent.

Cathleen Curl:  (38:32)

That’s fine. Because this is really the slide. What I wanted to tell people is the best way to get the best times to use this far. Um, if you’re dealing with a large company like you’re working for Google, you’re working on a project for Apple, um, for any of those big companies, those you can do a stop payment notice on. It’s not just on the public projects. So go ahead. How you would serve the stop payment notice on whoever is handling the construction monies for them many times, these, these large companies have a construction division. And so you will, they’ll, you’ll call them up and you’ll say, I’ve got a stop payment notice, where do you want me to send it? And you’ll actually send it to that person. Um, so public jobs, large private jobs. It’s also very good where somebody has declared bankruptcy

Seth Bloom : (39:29)

Green before you get into that. I’m not sure I understand the question, but we do have a question out there. It says, what about a prevailing wage job? How was that impacted?

Cathleen Curl: (39:39)

Prevailing wage really doesn’t have any impact on a stop payment notice. It would probably affect the total amount that you’re owed, but whether or not it’s a prevailing wage project doesn’t matter, which is great because there’s enough issues with prevailing wage issues. Anyway. So don’t worry about that for stop payment notices. Um, so for those large public jobs and the smaller ones, when the owner or general contractor files for bankruptcy, that’s a great time to have a stop payment notice because the bankruptcy will not affect the construction funds, unless it’s the bank or the lender that’s gone bankrupt. And that doesn’t happen very often where there’s a longterm delay on the project. And we all know with COVID and with all sorts of other things that have happened on projects where there’s a longterm delay, you don’t have to wait. You can put your stop payment notice on right away when you’re owed that money and they’ll hold the money.

Cathleen Curl:  (40:41)

It’ll be frozen until there’s a court order, or until you work something out. Now I have had people who’ve said, Oh, if you put a stop payment, notice on it slows my money down. Well, it doesn’t have to, because all that means is, is that the general contractor or whoever hired, you has to agree that the money is owed and then it can be released, uh, easy enough to do, but you do have to have that agreement. Um, and when a project fails, if the lender forecloses stop payment notices, reach the unexpended construction funds, even after foreclosure. So, Hey, that’s again, putting your hand in that pocket to be able to get this payment for you, um, is great. So what I want to stress for you is, think about the remedies that you have. Can I do a mechanics lien, public project, no public project. You would only have a claim against the person who hired you for breach of contract, uh, and for the stop payment notice and for any payment bond claim. Um, but on all of these projects, let’s get, you paid in as many ways as possible. You can only collect once, but again, we don’t care who pays you as long as somebody does. Thank you.

Seth Bloom: (42:00)

Another question popped up from Laurie. Um, what if someone files a mechanics lien without first giving a preliminary notice or that the owner GC claims not to have received it

Cathleen Curl:  (42:13)

Well on a mechanics lien? Um, you’d have to show that you did a preliminary notice. If you were required to, if you are a general contractor in a direct contract with the owner, then you don’t have to have done a preliminary notice. If you’re a sub or supplier, then yes. Now you should have sent it certified mail return receipt requested so that you’ve got the green card back, or you can track it with the post office under the code, the series of numbers that you get when you send your certified mail out. So that should be easy enough to track if, if there’s no proof that you did the preliminary notice and you were required to, then your lien may be invalid, but let’s hope that’s not the case. Any other questions?

Seth Bloom: (43:03)

Yup. We have a good amount of people on. So are there any other questions that Cathleen can answer? Now you have a live attorney in California that can answer these questions. Um, maybe, maybe something popped up here. Yes. Uh, what if you missed the 90 day Mark for a mechanics lien?

Cathleen Curl:  (43:24)

If the TA, if the lien period has not yet run, you can put another lien on. So the question is how’s that lien period run if it has, and your 90 days has gone by, I have to admit some of my clients do put a mechanics lien on anyway, and hope that that works. And then they’ll take it off. If somebody objects later as an attorney, I can’t really advise you to do that, but it does seem to work sometimes. Um, legally if the 90 days is run for that lean period, you’re not allowed to put another lien on legally. The recorder’s office is not going to stop you, but if an attorney, another attorney looked at it, they would write you a nasty letter.

Seth Bloom: (44:17)

So I’ll, uh, give a few more seconds to see if any other, uh, wait, we’ve got more people coming in right now. Uh, can you give examples of what a public project is? Oh, yes. A public

Cathleen Curl:  (44:32)

Project is if you are working for a public entity. So what that means is if you’re working for a public school district elementary high school, if you’re working for a city or a town or a County, so any of those kinds of projects where you’re dealing with a public entity and you can usually tell, um, based on the contract now, sometimes for some of the smaller subs, you may not have a good idea about what the project is. You may need to do a little bit of research. Maybe you want to Google the address, see, see what it is. Um, you should know from the information on your preliminary notice. So that, that you’re given. So where it says owner, it should say, city of Los Angeles or city of Daly city, or San Francisco. That’s a pretty good indication. Yes, that’s a public job.

Seth Bloom : (45:27)

Okay. We’ve got a bunch more. What if the property owner says there’s no lender, but you’re not really sure if there is is one or isn’t, um, this person’s a GC, Wendy’s a GC.

Cathleen Curl:  (45:38)

This, this can be a little bit tricky. Um, you most often know if there’s a lender because they would have vetted you. If you’re a general contractor first, you would have had to give them your, a copy of your contractor’s license and information. So, you know, there’s a lender. Um, many times there is not the law, however, expects you to go the extra mile and to find out the information, if you don’t know it already. So the law says, well, you should check the, the building permit. Well, it’s not really on the building permit. So I don’t know why that’s on there or on the plans. Uh, any construction loan will be recorded. So what you can do is you can check the recorder’s office and much of that information is online now, but depending on the County, it may not all be. Um, so you can check and see if there is a construction loan recorded.

Cathleen Curl: (46:33)

That’s the best way you probably don’t. You probably don’t want to do that on just any job. You know, if it’s a small job, it may not be worth your time. If it’s a really large job for your general contractors. And then it may be worthwhile to check on small residential projects. Um, sometimes owners do have a construction loan. So sometimes it’s worth checking out a construction loan though. A home equity loan that a homeowner takes out is not considered a construction loan. That’s just considered their money. So that’s not a lender. So chat up the owner, you know, ask him, how are you paying for this? Do you have enough money to pay me?

Cathleen Curl: (47:26)

No mechanics leads recorded in the County where the property is located. Stop payment notices do not get recorded, uh, nor do they get filed with the courthouse. They are served on the lender or the, or the owner who’s ever holding the construction funds. Good question.

Seth Bloom: (47:45)

Nicole asks, can you use stop payment notices on new customers without a, without a contract for service call for service call instead of a construction job for a service call?

Cathleen Curl: (47:58)

Probably not because I don’t think they’re going to have a construction loan just to do service and repair work. Um, if they did, it would be possible for you to do a stop payment notice. But in my experience, I don’t generally see that that owner has taken out a construction loan for service and repair work.

Seth Bloom: (48:18)

Uh, is it a good practice to send a preliminary, uh, notice with every job that is like,

Cathleen Curl: (48:24)

I love this question. The answer is yes, yes, yes. I want you guys to get in the habit of sending out a preliminary notice on every job. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients on the other side of my desk, say, I always do preliminary notices except for this one. And of course that’s the job that goes bad. Right. So just get in the habit of sending it out mindlessly, just do it.

Seth Bloom : (48:54)

Okay. How much of a contract should be a big private job must be to make, do use a stop payment notice it’s like this one is how big

Speaker 1: (49:05)

I got it. Yeah. Um, when yeah, how, how much money should you worry about before you do a stop payment notice? Doesn’t have to be big. It can be small. Sometimes just putting this out here is enough of a threat for the, the owner to say, Oh, we’re getting a lot of these. Um, you know, maybe there’s something wrong. Maybe I better step in and pay these people. And that’s what we want. We want them to pay you. So I wouldn’t give a dollar figure. I mean, obviously, you know, under, um, $500 or something, but is it worth the trouble for you on a public job? It’s not very expensive. You don’t need to put up a bond, you just do it. So even for small amounts, I’d do it.

Seth Bloom: (49:51)

Uh, does the info, um, regarding the lenders that you’re giving now, uh, are they only applicable if you’re a general contractor?

Cathleen Curl:  (50:00)

No. The stop payment notice is really especially meant for subcontractors and suppliers.

Seth Bloom: (50:07)

And this will be our last question cause we’ve kept you a few minutes late. Uh, Susan asks on a public works project. We, we mailed a notice of payment bond claim to the bonding company and the bonding company reject our claim.

Cathleen Curl:  (50:23)

Bonding companies can always reject your claim. Um, what you usually get back from bonding companies is, Oh, we got your claim and we’re investigating. And then every 30 days they send you another letter that says, yes, we’re still investigating. Uh, you have to still be able to prove your case. They’re going to ask you for copies of your invoices, your contract. You’ve got to show that you did, did the work or supplied the materials. Um, so yes, they certainly could, could deny it. That’s a different remedy than what we’re talking about today, which is of course the stop payment notice, but usually on public jobs, those two go hand in hand, the payment bond claim and the stop payment notice.

Seth Bloom : (51:03)

Well, Cathleen, I just wanted to thank you for a great webinar. I haven’t done a webinar where so many people came on and all commented on how helpful this was. So that it’s a big part of our company Levelset is helping people get paid. So this has been a really, uh, excellent webinar. And again, this is Cathleen curl. Who’s located in the Bay area, handling all sorts of construction issues all over California. If you have any legal questions or a problem, and you need to seek out a construction lawyer, we encourage you to call, call, or email Cathleen directly. We’d also love you to love for you to post your questions. Uh, with inside our expert center, we can get a attorney to answer those within usually 24 hours, especially in California. So please post your questions, please tune into your webinars and thank you so much, Cathleen, for this incredible webinar. And I hope everyone out there looks forward to some more.

Cathleen Curl:  (51:58)

Okay. You’re welcome. Thank you.