Kim v. TWA Construction, Inc., 78 Cal.App.5th 808 (2022), the California Court of Appeal, in a matter of first impression, expanded the effect of Section 7031(a) to bar a licensed general contractor recovering from an owner for work completed by an unlicensed subcontractor. The Court of appeal focused on the phrase in the Business and Professions Code §7026 to prevent the General Contractor to circumvent the licensing requirement of ‘by or through others,’ (§7026).
The Court of Appeal examined the definition of contractor in BPC § 7026 (which includes both “subcontractor and specialty contractor,” and a person does the work “himself or herself or by or through others”), taken together, BPC §§ 7026 and 7031(a) subject subcontractors to the same rules as contractors, prohibiting a subcontractor from taking legal action to recover compensation from the owner or general contractor for unlicensed work performed by the subcontractor. This makes sense to me, a contractor should not be able to recover compensation for the performance of unlicensed work, simply because the work was accomplished by hiring a subcontractor, which circumvents the purpose of BPC § 7031(a).
I love how the Court of Appeal Appellate Court referred to BPC § 7031(a) as “the shield” and BPC § 7031(b) as “the sword” of the Contractors State License Law. The reasoning of the trial and appellate court differs a bit, but this is a just result. The lesson to be learned is a contractor should not fight over $10,000 and money does not grow on trees!
Continue Reading Contractors cannot recover for work performed by unlicensed subcontractors. –Kim v. TWA Construction, Inc., 78 Cal.App.5th 808 (2022)
Finally, common sense prevails in Santa Monica “related to housing laws”! In the Federal (9th Circuit) case of 
Partners, and spouses, can lose title insurance if they transfer title out of their names or the entity in which they took title without first obtaining the proper title insurance Endorsement. The most common endorsement is called a Residence Held in Trust Endorsement (HO 05 43) If the transferor signs a grant deed, he is
Residential leases, in any facility where a person “resides”, cannot contain a mandatory arbitration clause. The plain language of Civil Code Section 1953 states that waivers of litigation rights in a lease or rental agreement are void as public policy, and Civil Code section 1940 extends these rights to tenants, lessees, boarders, or others of
Logically, the 4 year statute of limitations of Civil Code §387(1) applies to breach of a promissory note secured by a deed of trust. But foreclosure on the deed of trust is not limited to the “normal” statute of limitations. In Trenk v. Soheili, (Dec. 2020) B295434, (Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. PC058343), the
January 1, 2021, the new Civil Code § 2924f 
The current primary laws affecting residential tenancies are the