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Civil Code §8200 requires the preliminary notice to be served not later than 20 days after the claimant first furnishes labor, service, equipment, or materials, so work starting March 1 puts the deadline at March 21. (a) treats the notice as a condition of starting work; it is not, and a notice served on day one is valid but early. (b) borrows a ten-day period that appears elsewhere in construction practice, not here. (c) rounds to a month. Late service does not destroy the lien outright: under §8204 it limits the claim to work furnished in the 20 days before service and afterwards.

§8200(a) names three recipients: the owner or reputed owner, the direct contractor to which the claimant provides work, and the construction lender if there is one. §8200(c) and (d) make that service a prerequisite to a valid lien claim, stop payment notice, or claim against a payment bond. The real exceptions run the other way from these distractors: §8200(e) excuses a laborer entirely and requires a claimant who does have a direct contract with the owner to notify only the construction lender. (b) drops the owner, whose property the lien attaches to; (c) adds the building department, which has no role in the lien scheme; and (d) confuses the preliminary notice with recording the claim of lien itself at the recorder's office.

If no Notice of Completion or Cessation is recorded, a mechanics' lien must be recorded within 90 days of completion of the project. This is the maximum window for lien claimants.

When an owner records a Notice of Completion, subcontractors and material suppliers (who are not the direct contractor) have only 30 days to record their mechanics' lien. The prime contractor has 60 days.

A recorded mechanics' lien expires unless the claimant files a lawsuit to enforce it within 90 days of recording. Failure to sue timely renders the lien void.

A stop payment notice reaches money rather than land. §8520(a) lets any claimant with lien rights other than the direct contractor give the owner such a notice, §8530 lets the same claimant give one to the construction lender, and §8500 makes this chapter the exclusive route to the construction fund: no person may assert any other legal or equitable right against that fund except under a written contract with whoever holds it. §8044(a) adds that the notice may be bonded or unbonded, and a bonded notice is what compels a lender to withhold. (b) confuses it with a stop order, which Cal/OSHA or the registrar issues against the use of employee labour; nothing in a stop payment notice halts construction. (c) is the mechanics lien, the parallel remedy that does attach to the property. (d) sends the notice to an office with no role in the payment chain. §8520(b) is the trap running the other way: if the owner demands a stop payment notice and the claimant fails to give one, the claimant forfeits its lien.

To release a mechanics' lien from a property, the owner or contractor can record a lien release bond equal to 125% of the lien amount. This shifts the claimant's security from the property to the bond.

A valid mechanics' lien must include the claimant's name/address, employer/employee info, description of work/materials, amount of claim, description of the property, and owner's name. No SSN is required.

Mechanics' liens cannot be recorded against public property. However, on public works, unpaid claimants can serve a stop payment notice on the public entity to hold project funds.

The prime (direct) contractor has 60 days after the owner records a Notice of Completion to record a mechanics' lien. Subcontractors and suppliers have the shorter 30-day window.

Preliminary notices protect owners by informing them early who is furnishing labor and materials. Owners can then ensure funds flow properly and avoid paying the general contractor if subs are unpaid.

A lien secures a debt, and once the debt is paid the record should be cleared. The Code's machinery sits in the release-order article: §8482 bars the owner from petitioning for a release order unless, at least 10 days before filing, it gives the claimant notice demanding that the claimant execute and record a release and stating the grounds; §8480(a) then allows the petition once the claimant has let the 90-day enforcement period in §8460(a) run out; and §8488(c) awards reasonable attorney's fees to the prevailing party, which is what makes sitting on a satisfied lien expensive. §8494 adds that an expired or judicially released lien no longer gives constructive notice at all. So (a) is not the free option it looks like. (b) is the owner's document, recorded to shorten the lien deadlines, and it does nothing about a lien already on the record. (d) makes matters worse: re-recording restarts nothing, and a claim of lien stated for an amount no longer owed is the kind of overstatement §8422(c) punishes with forfeiture.

A joint check agreement is a contract term, not a statute: the owner or direct contractor agrees that payment will be issued on a check made payable to two payees at once — typically the subcontractor together with the supplier or sub-subcontractor behind it — so the lower-tier party must endorse the check and can see for itself that the money arrived. The word that matters in (a) is therefore jointly, not directly. No board approval is involved, so (b) is wrong, and the device is used on private and public work alike, so (d) is wrong. (c) is the dangerous one: the agreement changes nothing about Civil Code §8200, so a supplier that skips its preliminary notice loses its lien and stop-payment rights however the check is drawn.

Home improvement contractors must provide a "Notice to Owner" regarding the contractor's right to file a mechanics' lien AND a "Notice of Right to Cancel" informing homeowners of their three-day rescission right.

California Labor Code §3700 requires every employer to secure workers' compensation coverage before employing even one employee. There is no minimum employee threshold.

Operating without WC insurance can result in a stop order immediately prohibiting the use of employee labor, as well as substantial fines of up to $100,000. The CSLB may also suspend the license.

In a no-fault WC system, injured workers receive benefits regardless of whether they or the employer caused the injury. In exchange, workers' comp is generally the exclusive remedy against the employer.

Upon notice of a work injury, the employer must provide the employee with a DWC-1 claim form within one working day. Failing to do so can result in penalties and expanded employer liability.

California law requires employers to authorize up to $10,000 in medical treatment within one working day while a claim is being investigated (the "30-day presumption" period for treatment authorization).

§4653 sets temporary total disability at two-thirds of the average weekly earnings for the period of the disability, and §4453 puts a statutory floor and ceiling on the weekly figure that goes into that calculation — so it is a wage-replacement rate, never the whole wage that (c) promises. (a) describes permanent disability, which is rated and paid separately once the condition becomes permanent and stationary. (d) drops the indemnity altogether: medical treatment is its own benefit under §4600 and is not measured by the temporary disability rate. Aggregate temporary disability is capped too — §4656(c)(2) allows 104 compensable weeks within five years of the date of injury for most injuries dated on or after January 1, 2008.

Permanent and stationary is a medical conclusion rather than a legal one: the treating physician, an agreed medical evaluator or a qualified medical evaluator reports that the disability from all the conditions for which compensation is claimed has become permanent and stationary — the phrase §4658.7(b)(1) uses to start its own 60-day clock — which is the same idea clinicians call maximum medical improvement. It is the hinge of the claim, not the end of it. Permanent disability is then rated under §4660.1(a), which takes account of the nature of the physical injury or disfigurement, the employee's occupation and the employee's age at the time of injury, and §4650(b)(1) requires the first permanent disability payment within 14 days after the last payment of temporary disability — so money follows a rating, not the declaration itself, which is (d)'s error. (b) confuses the status with permanent total disability, a rating of 100 percent and a rare one. (c) confuses it with work restrictions: a worker can be permanent and stationary and still take modified or alternative work, which is precisely what §4658.7(b) rewards.

§3351(c) makes officers and members of the board of directors of a quasi-public or private corporation employees while they render actual service to the corporation for pay, and then lets such a person elect to be excluded from coverage under §3352(a)(16), (18) or (19). The election is the entire mechanism, and it is the officer's own, made in writing on the form the carrier keeps — which is why none of the facts in (a), (b) or (c) decides anything: headcount, salary level and even sole ownership leave the officer covered until the written election is made. Keep this separate from the licensing side, B&P §7125: a licensee with employees must keep a current Certificate of Workers' Compensation Insurance or Certification of Self-Insurance on file, a licensee with none may file an exemption unless it holds a C-8, C-20, C-22, C-39 or D-49 classification, and from January 1, 2028 (SB 216, as postponed by SB 1455) the only exemption left will be a joint venture under §7029 with no employees. An officer waiving coverage for himself does nothing about that duty.

Employers are required to post the DWC "Notice to Employees" poster in a conspicuous location. Failure to post can result in fines up to $7,000 and expanded employer liability for claims.

The Supplemental Job Displacement Benefit under Labor Code §4658.7 turns on outcome rather than body part: it issues when the injury leaves permanent partial disability and the employer does not offer regular, modified, or alternative work the employee can do. (a) sets a treatment threshold — most injuries needing several visits resolve with no permanent disability and no voucher. (b) and (c) pick catastrophic injuries that certainly qualify, but they state the rule far too narrowly; a shoulder or back injury that ends a roofer's usual work qualifies just as well.

Workers' comp is the exclusive remedy against the employer for work injuries. Employees generally cannot sue their employer in civil court, though exceptions exist for serious and willful employer misconduct.

WC coverage must be in place before the first day any employee begins work. There is no grace period — employing workers without coverage even for one day is a violation.

The point of a return-to-work programme is to put the injured worker back on the payroll doing something the treating physician allows, and the statutes reward it directly. §4658.7(b) makes the supplemental job displacement benefit voucher payable unless the employer offers regular, modified or alternative work — the three terms defined in §4658.1 — no later than 60 days after the report finding the disability permanent and stationary. §4650(b)(2) lets the employer withhold permanent disability payments before an award where it has offered a position paying at least 85 percent of the former wages, and §139.48 funds the Return-to-Work Supplement Program on top of that. (b) confuses long-run experience rating with an immediate premium cut, which no offer of modified work produces. (c) is wrong on the statute's own terms: medical treatment remains the employer's obligation under §4600 whatever work is offered. (d) describes surveillance rather than a benefit.

An unlicensed or uninsured subcontractor's workers can be deemed employees of the hiring contractor, so the general contractor's own workers' compensation policy answers the injury and its loss experience carries the claim — which is why verifying each sub's certificate before mobilisation is not paperwork but risk control. (a) is what everyone assumes, and the point of the statutory employer doctrine is that it does not stop there. (c) misroutes a work injury to group health, which coordinates around workers' compensation rather than replacing it. (d) reaches a party who neither hired nor directed the injured worker.

§3700 requires every employer to secure the payment of compensation and sets no floor at all: there is no minimum headcount and no minimum number of hours, so a single part-time helper is enough. §3351 backs that up by defining an employee as every person in the service of an employer under any appointment or contract of hire or apprenticeship, express or implied, oral or written, whether lawfully or unlawfully employed. That disposes of (b), (c) and (d) together, because hours, headcount and the worker's own preference are all beside the point and an employee cannot waive the employer's duty. On the licensing side, B&P §7125 requires a current Certificate of Workers' Compensation Insurance or Certification of Self-Insurance on file, any no-employee exemption the contractor had filed stops applying the day the helper is hired, and §7125.2 suspends the licence by operation of law from the date coverage was required. (Until January 1, 2028 a licensee with no employees may file that exemption unless it holds a C-8, C-20, C-22, C-39 or D-49 classification; from that date SB 216, as postponed by SB 1455, allows it only to a joint venture under §7029 with no employees.)

Labor Code §3700.5 makes it a misdemeanor for an employer to be unlawfully uninsured for workers' compensation. It is punishable by a fine, imprisonment in county jail, or both.

§3710.1 is the immediate remedy: where an employer has failed to secure the payment of compensation as §3700 requires, the director shall issue and serve a stop order prohibiting the use of employee labour until the employer complies, and it takes effect the moment it is served. The employer may protest in writing within 20 days and the hearing follows within five days, but the work stays stopped meanwhile, and any employee idled by the stoppage must be paid by the employer for the lost time, up to 10 days. The money follows: §3722(a) assesses $1,500 per employee employed when the order is served, §3722(b) assesses the greater of twice the premium that should have been paid or that same $1,500 per employee for the uninsured period, and §3700.5(a) makes the failure a misdemeanour carrying up to a year in county jail and a fine of up to double the premium but not less than $10,000 — rising under §3700.5(b) to triple the premium and not less than $50,000 on a second conviction. (b) belongs to the registrar and follows a disciplinary proceeding, not a site visit, though B&P §7127(a) lets the registrar issue its own stop order. (c) has no statutory basis, and (d) shifts to the owner a debt the statute puts on the employer.

Labor Code §3600 establishes workers' compensation as a no-fault system: an employee injured in the course of employment receives benefits without having to prove the employer was at fault, and even if the employee was partly at fault.

Labor Code §3602 makes workers' compensation the exclusive remedy for an employee against the employer for a work-related injury. In exchange for guaranteed benefits, the employee generally cannot sue the employer in civil court.

§3351(c) makes an officer or member of the board of directors of a private or quasi-public corporation an employee while rendering actual service to the corporation for pay, and §3352(a)(16)(A)(i) is the way out: such an officer may execute a written waiver if he owns at least 10 percent of the issued and outstanding stock of the corporation, or at least 1 percent where a parent, grandparent, sibling, spouse or child owns at least 10 percent and the officer is covered by a health insurance policy or health care service plan. Both halves matter — the ownership stake and the signed waiver — which is why (a) and (d) are wrong in opposite directions: coverage is the default position, and the exclusion never takes effect on its own. (c) invents an earnings test the section does not contain; what the 1 percent route conditions the waiver on is health coverage, not wage level. Two shareholder-officers of a roofing corporation can therefore both opt out, but only on paper and only if their holdings qualify.

§5401(a) gives the employer one working day from receiving notice or knowledge of the injury to provide, personally or by first-class mail, a claim form together with a notice of potential eligibility for benefits — to the injured employee, or to the dependents where the injury was fatal. The duty has a threshold: it arises where the injury results in lost time beyond the work shift in which it happened, or in medical treatment beyond first aid, and the section defines first aid narrowly as one-time treatment plus a follow-up observation visit for minor scratches, cuts, burns or splinters, and it stays first aid even when a physician provides it. (c) inverts that threshold: treatment beyond first aid is one of the things that triggers the form, not a precondition to handing it over. (a) and (b) both start the clock at the injury itself rather than at the employer's notice or knowledge, which is what §5400 and §5402 are about, and then choose a period the statute never uses.

Labor Code §5402 requires the insurer to authorize and pay for medical treatment up to $10,000 while the claim is being investigated, so the injured worker is not left without care during the decision period.

Temporary total disability benefits generally equal two-thirds of the worker's average weekly wages, subject to statutory minimums and maximums. They replace lost income while the worker recovers.

Labor Code §4658.7 provides a supplemental job displacement benefit in the form of a voucher that helps pay for retraining or skill enhancement when an injured worker does not return to work and is not offered suitable alternative employment.

§3550(a) requires every employer subject to the compensation provisions to post, and keep posted, in a conspicuous location frequented by employees where it can be read easily during the workday, a notice naming the employer's current compensation insurance carrier — or stating that the employer is self-insured — and identifying who is responsible for claims adjustment. §3550(d) has the administrative director prescribe the form, requires the notice to tell employees that all injuries should be reported, and requires posting in both English and Spanish where there are Spanish-speaking employees. The teeth are in §3550(b): failing to keep the notice conspicuously posted is a misdemeanour and is prima facie evidence that the employer carries no insurance. (a) and (b) replace a posting the statute wants visible at the worksite with private delivery, and (c) files the policy with an agency that has no role in workers' compensation.

§2750.5 creates a rebuttable presumption affecting the burden of proof that a worker performing services for which a contractor's licence is required — or performing them for a person who is required to hold one — is an employee rather than an independent contractor, and the section ends by making a valid licence a condition of independent contractor status for that work. An unlicensed person therefore cannot be a subcontractor at all, so he and the crew he brought are the hiring contractor's employees, and §3351 makes a person an employee whether lawfully or unlawfully employed. That is why (a) is exactly backwards: the injured worker's rights are the reason the presumption exists. (b) has no basis, because an employee never self-insures. (d) reaches too far — an owner who hires unlicensed workers directly can become their employer, but owning the land does not make the owner the employer in every case.

Under Bus. & Prof. Code §7125, a contractor with employees must keep a valid workers' compensation certificate on file with the CSLB. If coverage lapses and no exemption is on file, the license is automatically suspended.

Commercial general liability (CGL) insurance covers third-party bodily injury and property damage caused by the contractor's operations. Workers' compensation covers the contractor's own employees, not third parties.

Builder's risk insurance (also called course-of-construction insurance) protects the building project and its materials from physical loss such as fire, theft, vandalism, and certain weather events during construction.

Insurance is a two-party contract between the insurer and the insured that transfers risk of loss. A surety bond involves three parties (principal, obligee, surety) and guarantees the principal's performance or obligations; the surety can seek reimbursement from the principal for amounts it pays out.

A certificate of insurance is a document issued by an insurer summarizing the existence, types, and limits of a policyholder's coverage. General contractors routinely require certificates from subcontractors before allowing them on the job.

Additional insured status is derivative: the owner is brought under the contractor's own liability policy for claims arising out of the contractor's work, so when a third party sues over the contractor's operations that insurer defends and indemnifies the owner too, within the policy's limits and terms. Ownership of the policy does not move, which is what (a) supposes. Premium is the named insured's obligation and is never refunded to an additional insured, so (b) is wrong. (c) is the substantive error worth remembering: liability cover answers claims made by others, not damage to the owner's own property, so the owner still needs builder's risk or property insurance. The endorsement is also narrower than being a named insured, because it reaches only liability connected to the named insured's work.

Commercial auto insurance covers liability and damage arising from vehicles used in the contractor's business. Personal auto policies generally exclude vehicles used for business purposes.

Errors and omissions cover, sold also as professional liability, is written precisely for economic loss caused by negligent professional services — a defective design, a bad specification, a missed code requirement — where nobody is hurt and nothing is physically damaged. That gap is the reason it exists. A commercial general liability policy is triggered by bodily injury or property damage, and its standard form excludes liability arising out of the rendering of professional services, so a pure design error falls outside (a). (b) is the wrong risk altogether, covering injury to the contractor's own employees. (d) is not insurance at all: the §7071.6 licence bond is a surety bond answering to the beneficiaries §7071.5 lists, up to $25,000, and it does not stand behind design advice. Design-build is where this matters most, because one firm now carries both the construction and the design exposure.

Mechanics' lien rights belong to those who furnish labor, services, equipment, or materials that improve the property, such as contractors, subcontractors, laborers, suppliers, and equipment lessors. A lender that merely provided financing has no mechanics' lien right.

With no notice recorded, both halves of the scheme land on the same date. §8412 gives the direct contractor until the earlier of 90 days after completion of the work of improvement or 60 days after the owner records a notice of completion or cessation; §8414 gives every other claimant the earlier of 90 days after completion or 30 days after such a notice. Take the notice away and only the 90-day branch is left, for everybody — which is exactly what makes recording a notice worth the owner's trouble. So (a) borrows the 30-day figure that exists only once a notice has been recorded. (b) starts the clock at signature, a date the lien statutes never use. (c) is out by a factor of four, though it sits near a real rule: under §8460(b), where claimant and owner record an extension of credit, the action to enforce can run up to a year after completion of the work. And recording is only the first half of the job — §8460(a) then requires the action to enforce the lien within 90 days of recordation, or the claim of lien expires and is unenforceable.