When it comes to Miller Act payment bond claims, repairing one’s own work does NOT extend the one year statute of limitations to file suit on a Miler Act payment bond.  Belonger Corp., Inc. v. BW Contracting Services, Inc., 2018 WL 704379, *3 (E.D. Wisconsin 2018) (“The courts that have considered this question tend to agree that, once a subcontractor completes its work under the subcontract, repairs or corrections to that work do not fall within the meaning of ‘labor’ or ‘materials’ and, as such, do not extend the Miller Act’s one-year statute of limitations.”).

 

Well, what if the subcontractor was repairing its own work due to an issue caused by another subcontractor? 

 

This was the situation in Belonger Corp. where a plumber was asked to unclog a plumbing line that had concrete in the line (caused by another subcontractor)  months after the plumber had completed its contractual scope of work.  Before the subcontractor did this work, it smartly sent an e-mail stating that it needs an e-mail acknowledgement that this additional work is authorized and a change order will be forthcoming.  The contractor responded, “Yes, please proceed with repair work on a T&M [time and materials] basis….”   Sure enough, the subcontractor unclogged the line and a change order was never issued.

 

The subcontractor filed a Miller Act payment bond claim for unpaid contract work plus change order work, such as unclogging the line.  The subcontractor based its last day for purposes of the statute of limitations on the work associated with unclogging the line and not on the day it completed its contractual scope of work.  If it was determined that the subcontractor’s last day / final furnishing date was when it fully completed its contractual scope of work, its Miller Act payment bond lawsuit would be untimely / barred by the one year statute of limitations to sue on a Miller Act payment bond.  

 

The issue was whether the subcontractor’s remedial work to its own plumbing line extended its final furnishing date.  The trial court found this to be a question of fact because this arguably was change order work that amended the subcontract to include this additional work.  The fact that the subcontractor sent an e-mail before doing this work and the fact that the contractor responded helped the subcontractor create a question of fact that its payment bond claim was not untimely because unclogging its own plumbing line due to an issue caused by another trade subcontractor was additional subcontractual work that extended its final furnishing date.

 

If you are in this situation, the best bet is not to bank on this type of argument.  File your Miller Act payment bond claim within one-year of finishing your contractual work.  With that said, if you don’t, the argument raised by the subcontractor here that repairing its own work due to an issue caused by another subcontractor was additional work that modified the terms of the subcontract and extended its final furnishing date is a creative argument helped by the e-mail this subcontractor smartly sent.

 

For more information on the Miller Act, check out this ebook.

 

Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.