Florida Court Gives Contractors a Hard Reminder: Miss a 20-Day Lien Show-CauseDeadline and You May Lose the Lien

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A new Florida appellate decision gives contractors a simple warning: if an owner serves you with a statutory summons to enforce your construction lien, you cannot sit on the lien while you negotiate the underlying payment dispute. You either protect the lien the way Chapter 713 requires, or you can lose it.

That is what happened in Stein v. Reynolds Ventures, Inc., a Second District Court of Appeal decision issued August 7, 2026.

Reynolds Ventures, doing business as Wrightway Emergency Water Removal, performed work at a condominium community under a contract with the condominium association. Reynolds later recorded a construction lien involving the condominium units. Two unit owners, Kenneth and Jill Stein, challenged the lien and used Florida’s lien-discharge procedure under section 713.21(4), Florida Statutes.

The contractor lost the lien.

Not because the court decided the work was defective. Not because Reynolds failed to prove its scope of work. Not because the contractor was necessarily unpaid.

It lost the lien because it did not follow the procedure required to keep the lien alive.

How the Contractor Lost the Lien

Reynolds performed work throughout the Privateer North condominium community in Longboat Key under a contract with the association. It then recorded a lien listing the condominium unit owners.

Reynolds later maintained that its work involved both common elements and multiple individual units. The Steins owned one of those units.

They filed suit challenging the lien. More importantly, they invoked section 713.21(4), which allows a property owner to force a lien claimant to make a decision: enforce the lien or explain why it should remain on the property without being enforced.

The clerk issued Reynolds a summons giving it twenty days to show cause why the lien should not be enforced or canceled. The summons specifically warned that if Reynolds failed to show cause or commence an enforcement action before the return date, the court was required to cancel the lien.

Reynolds did respond; however, that was not enough.

Reynolds told the court that it had not filed a lien foreclosure action because it was trying to resolve the payment dispute directly with the condominium association. It explained that the Steins were not the contracting party, that the unit owners had not been billed directly, and that the lien was being maintained to preserve Reynolds’ payment rights.

Reynolds alternatively asked for another fourteen days to file suit if the court determined foreclosure was necessary.

From a contractor’s standpoint, that position probably sounds reasonable—from a Chapter 713 standpoint, it was not.

The Rule: Twenty Days Means Twenty Days

Section 713.21 proceedings are treated as special statutory proceedings. And courts require strict compliance with the statute.

The Second DCA emphasized that a lien claimant must strictly follow both the requirements and the deadlines imposed by the lien statute. The trial judge does not have the normal flexibility to simply give the contractor more time because the contractor has a legitimate payment dispute.

The court also made clear that showing “good cause” is a high bar. Prior Florida cases have held that, outside circumstances showing that the contractor has actually taken steps to foreclose the lien, there are few situations that qualify.

The appellate court held that the contractual payment dispute and the lien foreclosure remedy are two separate things.

A contractor may still have a valid breach-of-contract claim even if its lien gets discharged. But negotiations over the contract do not automatically preserve the lien. That distinction cost Reynolds its lien rights against the Steins’ unit.

On the Jobsite, the Lien Is Leverage

Contractors rarely think of a lien as the lawsuit itself. They think of it as leverage.

The lien gets recorded, payment negotiations continue, the owner and contractor fight over the final payment application, change orders, retainage, punch-list work, backcharges, defective-work allegations, delay claims, or whatever else is holding up the money. Everybody hopes the dispute gets resolved before anyone spends another $50,000 fighting about it.

That is normal project practice.

The problem is that an owner can force the contractor’s hand.

Once the owner properly invokes section 713.21(4), the contractor does not necessarily get to leave the lien sitting in the public records while continuing negotiations. The statutory clock starts running, and the contractor must respond accordingly.

The Second DCA rejected the idea that the existence of a contract, completed services, and unpaid money were enough by themselves to establish good cause for leaving the lien in place.

Simply put: “They owe me money” is not the same thing as “I complied with the lien statute.”

Condo Work Adds Another Layer: If You Lien the Units, the Unit Owners Get Rights Too

The case also clears up an important point for contractors working on condominiums.

Reynolds argued that the Steins should not be able to challenge the lien because Reynolds’ contract was with the condominium association, not the individual unit owners. The court rejected that argument.

Florida’s Condominium Act treats lien rights differently depending on whether work is being performed on individual units or on condominium common elements.

Where association-authorized work involves common elements, section 718.121 permits a lien to be asserted against the condominium parcels based upon each unit’s proportionate responsibility for common expenses. Association authorization effectively supplies the required consent from the unit owners for that purpose.

But there is a tradeoff.

If the contractor’s lien reaches the individual condominium parcels, the individual owners obtain the rights of a property owner under Chapter 713. That includes the ability to use Chapter 713 procedures to remove or discharge the lien against their property.

So a contractor cannot argue both sides. You cannot lien the individual units when you need security for payment and then argue that the individual owners have no standing because your contract was only with the association.

The Mistake: Treating the Lien Like the Payment Claim

The contractor’s biggest mistake was treating the construction contract and the construction lien like they were the same claim.

They are not.

The contract is the basis for the contractor’s right to get paid. It may include the original scope of work, approved change orders, payment applications, schedule obligations, warranty work, retainage, and whatever other terms govern the project.

The lien is security for that payment claim.

Losing the lien does not necessarily mean losing the underlying money claim.

The Second DCA relied heavily on that distinction. Reynolds’ efforts to resolve its contract dispute with the association did not excuse its failure to timely proceed with enforcement of the lien.

Florida courts have previously held that cancellation of the lien does not necessarily prevent the contractor from continuing to pursue its contractual claim for payment.

That is the part contractors need to understand.

Even the Judge Could Not Save the Lien

The trial court originally found sufficient cause based on the existence of the contract, the services Reynolds performed, and the lack of payment.

The Second DCA said that was not enough.

Section 713.21(4) uses mandatory language. When the lien claimant does not timely enforce the lien and does not establish legally sufficient good cause, the court shall cancel the lien.

The appellate court held that the trial court had no discretion to excuse Reynolds’ failure to comply with the statutory deadline.

The court therefore ordered the lien against the Steins’ property discharged.

What Contractors Should Do When the Summons Hits

The practical lesson is not that every payment dispute needs to become a lawsuit immediately.

The lesson is that lien deadlines need to be treated differently from ordinary project deadlines.

If the owner’s lawyer sends a letter about a disputed change order, you may have time to negotiate. If the superintendent disputes a backcharge, you may have time to work through the numbers. If the architect has not approved the payment application, the parties may still be able to resolve it through the normal project process.

But if you receive a summons under section 713.21(4), that is no longer ordinary project correspondence.

It is a statutory deadline affecting your security interest in the property.

That document needs to get from the project manager, superintendent, accounting department, registered agent, or whoever received it to the person handling the contractor’s lien rights immediately.

Do not let it sit in an inbox while the owner and contractor continue talking about settlement.

Do not assume that because the owner plainly owes money, the lien will survive.

Do not assume that filing an answer, demanding arbitration, or telling the court you are negotiating necessarily protects the lien.

And do not assume the judge can simply give you another week because everyone knows you performed the work.

Under Stein, that assumption can cost you the lien.

The Final Walkthrough

Florida’s construction lien law gives contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers one of the strongest collection tools available in the construction industry.

But Chapter 713 is full of deadlines, notices, and technical requirements, and the courts regularly enforce them strictly.

Stein v. Reynolds Ventures is a good example.

The contractor may have performed the work. The contractor may have been unpaid. The contractor may have had a legitimate contract claim against the association.

None of that saved the lien.

Once the unit owners invoked the statutory procedure requiring Reynolds to enforce the lien or show legally sufficient cause, the clock controlled. Reynolds chose to continue negotiating instead of timely enforcing the lien. The Second DCA held that the trial court had no discretion to preserve it.

For contractors, the takeaway is straightforward: use the carrot to get paid but keep the stick in your hand.

Negotiate, work through the dispute, and give the owner a chance to make it right. But do not let those discussions run out the clock on your lien rights.

Once the statutory deadline passes, the stick is gone, and the owner has a lot less reason to take the carrot.

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About the Author

Daniel Kersey is a Florida Board Certified Construction Law Attorney with Smith Campbell, PA, and the only Florida Board Certified Construction Law Attorney based in Lake County, Florida.

His practice focuses on representing contractors, subcontractors, owners, developers, and other construction industry professionals in payment disputes, construction defect claims, lien and bond matters, contract disputes, and complex commercial litigation.

Daniel grew up around Central Florida agriculture and blue-collar trades, giving him a practical understanding of the businesses, jobsites, and people behind the disputes he handles. He regularly represents clients throughout Florida in both state and federal court.

Contact Daniel Kersey danielk@smithcampbellpa.com 352-787-1241