C. W. Matthews Contracting Company, Inc. filed an action seeking a materialman’s special lien against property owned by Federal Trust Bank.1 Federal Trust Bank thereafter obtained a bond for discharge of materialman’s lien from Hartford Fire Insurance Company, and the latter was added as a defendant. C. W. Matthews amended the complaint to recover under the lien discharge bond. The trial court granted summary judgment to C. W. Matthews and denied summary judgment to Federal Trust Bank and Hartford Fire Insurance collectively, the Bank. The Bank appeals from the rulings on the motions. For the reasons that follow, we affirm. Summary judgment is proper when there is no genuine issue of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. We apply a de novo standard of review and view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmovant.2 In January 2007, C. W. Matthews entered into a contract with Crescent Development, Inc. for the former to provide asphalt and paving services and materials to a 12.67-acre parcel of land; the property contained a strip shopping center. On June 13, 2007, C. W. Matthews completed the work, which was valued in excess of $400,000. On September 12, 2007, C. W. Matthews, still owed $134,858.77, filed a claim of lien against the 12.67-acre property in the amount of $105,475.77. Still unpaid in February 2008, C. W. Matthews filed in superior court a complaint against Crescent Development and a notice of the action. C. W. Matthews obtained a default judgment against Crescent Development on June 5, 2008 for $134,858.77. On June 3, 2008, Federal Trust Bank purchased a 1.8-acre parcel of the 12.67-acre property. In February 2009, when it had not received any payment of the amounts in the claim of lien or the default judgment, C. W. Matthews filed the instant action seeking a special lien against Federal Trust Bank’s property in the amount of its judgment against Crescent Development;3 it later amended the complaint to recover under the lien discharge bond. The trial court granted summary judgment to C. W. Matthews pursuant to the lien discharge bond in the amount of $105,475.77, and denied summary judgment to the Bank.
1. The Bank contends that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment to C. W. Matthews because the claim of lien was not filed within the time limit set out in OCGA § 44-14-361.1. The Bank and C. W. Matthews agree that the version of OCGA § 44-14-361.1 applicable in this case is the one that was in effect in June 2007.4 That version of OCGA § 44-14-361.1 set forth, among other things, the requirements for declaring and creating the liens specified in OCGA § 44-14-361.5 It provided, in relevant part: a To make good the liens specified in . . . subsection a of Code Section 44-14-361, they must be created and declared in accordance with the following provisions, and on failure of any of them the lien shall not be effective or enforceable: . . . . 2 The filing for record of his claim of lien within three months after the completion of the work . . . or within three months after the material or machinery is furnished in the office of the clerk of the superior court. . . .6 The Bank posits that “three months” as it appeared in the applicable 1991 version of the statute meant “90 days,” not three calendar months as C. W. Matthews contends; thus, because the claim of lien came due on June 13, 2007, and July and August each have 31 days, C. W. Matthews’s filing on September 12 was two days beyond the 90-day deadline. While we recognize that lien statutes in derogation of the common law must be strictly construed in favor of the property owner and against the materialman,7 the Bank’s argument is nonetheless without merit.
