Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1919 — DECISION OF MUCH INTEREST [ARTICLE]

DECISION OF MUCH INTEREST

To Building Supply Dealers, Contractors and Property Owners. The Indiana supreme court last week in reversing a decision by the Lake superior court held that a person or firm providing materials for the construction of a building by a contractor can not assert a lien against the property of the owner, if he has provided in his contract a covenant with the contractor that no mechanic’s lien be filed against the property. The court held that this rule holds good whether the person providing the building materials khew of the provision in the contract against the mechanic’s Hen, or not. The decision was made in grahting a rehearing and in reversing the case of the Baldwin Locomotive Works against the Edward Hines Lumber company et al., which has been pending in the supreme court since Oct. 21, 1915. The statute under which a lien was claimed in the suit, includes in its provisions contractors, subcontractors, mechanics, journeymen, laborers, “and all persons (performing labor or furnishing materials or machinery” for the erection of a building. By the decision of the court, those who provide materials for building have rights equal .to those of mechanics and laborers, and the decision, lawyers say, will prevent any mechanic or laborer from' asserting a mechanic’s Hen in future construction work, if the owner and contractor put in their contracts a claiise that no such liens shall be filed against the property. The clause of the contract In the case decided, which the supreme court held Inviolable, read: “No contractor, subcontractor, materialman or other person furnishing labor or materials for the work herein provided for, or for alterations or additions thereto, shall have any right to file any mechanic’s Hen, or claim of amy sort or kind against the premises or any part thereof.”