Every time Santa Rosa Beach restoration contractor Ken Larsen submits a request for payment, he braces himself. It’s always a fight, Larsen says, that rumbles for weeks, months, years, catapulting between 40% and 80% of his annual earnings into limbo.

And now, a new law passed in Florida on May 23 might make things even tougher for Larsen by threatening what legal power he had to demand payment.