Builders Landscaper trying to sue US for payment not received by builder

[jmt123]

What is the name of your state? North Carolina

We recently built a custom home. We opted for builder financing instead of a construction loan of our own, so the property was not ours and was in the builders name until we closed on it just a few weeks ago. At closing we were provided a clean title as well as the typical title insurance. I'm certain that our lender (a leading bank) would not have allowed us to close on the property if there were any outstanding liens on it.

Now we are getting phone calls from the landscaper saying that the builder owes him around $20,000 for numerous jobs that he has done for them including work at our house. For our house the amount is $350. He is claiming that he is going to sue us since he can not get the builder to pay him. I guess the builder is claiming that they are not happy with the job that he did. I have to admit, it was not very good work- but we did not complain about it once.

Can he do this? We had no contract with him. His contract was with our builder. If you think about it we already paid for that landscaping when we paid the builder the total price for the house which included a certain amount of landscaping.

What can we do about this?