Need some serious answers

[jv27403]

Jurisdiction/Place: USA - North Carolina

I have been dealing with, in my opinion, a not so honest contractor. I have as of today discovered he has filed a lein on real property. He did this in June 2009. As of yet he has not completed the work per our contract. Contract states last payment due 30 days after completion. We've already paid out $120,000. We have been to mediation and he still refused to complete the work. I found out about the lein when served with a civil summons today which is confusing because part of the contract stated if there was a disput we were bound to "Binding Arbritration". Part of the disagreement is due to orignally the price of the plans was part of the total price. This was reflected in all his billing. He submitted three bills, weeks after they left the job site. Two reflected the agreed price and the third which he added an additional $10,500. to the total. He also falsefied the final punch list to agree with the lein date he states he "lost" the original list, so he just has a list by which he claims is done with NO signitures. He also changed the final contract without addendums nor had us intial those changes. When asked about this he stormed out of the meeting. I have not answered the summons as of yet. Yes it seems to be a mess.

1) Is there any recourse for falsely filing a lein? and is There any reason we did not know before now?

2) Advice as to how I should counter this? Seems like he is attempting to strong arm us. He knows we put everything into building this business and knows we do not have the resources for an attorney.

3) He also called our equipment rep and called the property owner to discuss the matter. At this point we had to show them all the paperwork involved. Once we had done this they questioned why he had called to dicuss this matter with them. Is there a breach of privacey here.


Thank you for your greatly needed help.