Construction Contract Dispute Lawyer

Cory Cannon brings construction contract claims across Tampa Bay. We represent property owners pursuing relief for abandonment, refusal to perform, and other contract breaches. We also represent contractors and subcontractors pursuing payment or performance claims. A contractor may take a deposit, pull no permits, and stop answering the phone. A builder may complete authorized work and face an unpaid balance. A disagreement over scope can stop the project while the financial harm grows.

One distinction matters before anything else on this page. A contract dispute is a performance problem: work that was promised and not delivered, or a working relationship that broke down before the job was done. Defective completed work belongs under construction defects and follows a separate statute and mandatory pre-suit process. Unpaid invoices, withheld draws, and unreleased retainage belong under our construction payment dispute page.

This page explains how Florida law treats a broken construction contract, what the key clauses do, the deadlines that control the claim, and how a claimant evaluates available relief. It is part of our broader construction litigation practice for owners and construction businesses bringing affirmative claims.

What a construction contract dispute looks like

We use the term to mean a fight about performance: who was supposed to do what, by when, and whether they did it. These are the versions that come up most often in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, and Sarasota counties.

If you are the owner

• Abandonment. The crew stopped showing up. Weeks pass with no work, no materials delivered, and no response to calls or texts. The contractor may still claim the job is “active.” Florida law and most contracts look at conduct, not labels.
• Refusal to perform. The contractor remains on the job on paper but will not schedule work, will not order materials, or conditions any further work on payments the contract does not call for.
• Slow-walking. Token appearances (a worker for an hour, a pallet dropped in the driveway) timed to avoid the appearance of abandonment while the schedule slides months past the completion date.
• Scope fights. The contractor insists that items shown in the plans are “extras” and demands change orders for work you believe the price already covered.
• Mid-project repricing. A demand to renegotiate the contract price partway through, presented as take-it-or-leave-it while your project sits open to the weather.

If you are the contractor

• Wrongful termination. You were terminated “for cause” without the written notice and cure period the contract requires, often days before a large pay application came due.
• Owner interference. The owner blocks site access, sits on selections and decisions the schedule depends on, or puts a second contractor on the job over your work, then blames you for the delay.
• Scope creep without paper. You were directed to perform extra work on a promise to “work it out later,” and now the owner refuses to pay for any of it.
• Manufactured default. Punch-list items (the minor corrections normal at the end of any job) get reframed as material breach to justify termination and avoid the final draw.

Nonpayment runs through many of these fact patterns. When the core problem is money owed for work performed, the tools are different (payment demands, lien rights, and prompt-payment statutes), and our payment dispute page covers them in detail. When the complaint is the quality of what was built on an office, retail, or multi-family project rather than the schedule or the money, that is a defect claim, handled on our commercial construction defect page. Short answers to the questions owners and contractors ask before either fight starts are collected in our construction litigation FAQ.

The contract controls. Read it before anyone acts.

Florida courts enforce construction contracts as written. Before you terminate, walk off the job, or send a demand letter, the contract’s own machinery decides most of what happens next. Six sets of clauses do most of the work:

• Scope. What the price buys. Plans, specifications, and proposals are often incorporated by reference, and an order-of-precedence clause says which document wins when they conflict. Most scope fights are resolved by reading these documents together, carefully, once.
• Schedule. The completion date, whether time is “of the essence” (a clause that makes deadlines strictly enforceable), and how delays extend the date.
• Payment terms. The draw schedule (which payments come due at which milestones) and the schedule of values, the line-item breakdown of the contract price that pay applications are measured against.
• Termination. Termination “for cause” ends the contract because of the other side’s breach. Termination “for convenience” ends it without fault, usually with payment owed for work performed to date. The two carry very different price tags.
• Notice and claims. Many contracts require written notice of a claim (for delay, for extra cost, for default) within a set number of days, and treat silence as waiver. These clock in days, not years, and they are enforced.
• Dispute resolution. Arbitration clauses, venue selection, and attorney-fee provisions decide where the fight happens and who funds it.

Change orders deserve their own sentence because they cause a disproportionate share of litigation. Nearly every construction contract requires changes to be written, signed, and priced before the changed work proceeds, and almost nobody follows that procedure on a live job. Florida courts have addressed what happens when the parties ignore their own change-order clause, and the answer is fact-intensive. If your dispute centers on verbal directives, disputed extras, or unsigned change orders, our change order dispute page addresses it directly.

What if there is no signed contract?

It happens more than anyone admits: a one-page proposal, a text thread, a handshake and a deposit. Florida enforces oral construction contracts. The terms are proven through conduct (payments made, work performed, texts and emails exchanged), and the limitation period is shorter: four years instead of five. Where no enforceable contract can be proven at all, Florida law still allows recovery of the reasonable value of work performed under a theory called quantum meruit, so a contractor who did real work is not left with nothing, and an owner who paid real money for nothing has a claim regardless.

Two cautions on informal deals. For owners: the deposit protections of section 489.126, discussed below, apply whether or not the agreement was formal. For contractors: without a written contract you lose the clauses that protect you: no fee-shifting, no notice procedure that disciplines the owner, and a harder path on extras. The absence of paper hurts whoever needs the missing term. We sort out what the enforceable agreement actually was as the first task in every case like this.

Default and cure: the step most parties skip

A “default” is a failure to perform an obligation the contract requires. Most construction contracts do not permit instant termination when a default occurs. They require a written notice of default that identifies the specific failure, followed by a “cure period,” a set window, commonly 7 to 14 days, in which the defaulting party may fix the problem. Only if the cure period runs without a cure does the right to terminate for cause mature.

Terminating without following that sequence is one of the most expensive mistakes in construction. If the termination did not comply with the contract, the termination itself can be the breach, and the party who fired the contractor can end up owing damages to the party who was failing to perform. Some contracts convert an improper for-cause termination into a termination for convenience, which changes the available damages. The contract controls whether that protection exists.

The practical rules follow from the mechanics. Owners pursuing a claim should build the record before acting: dated photographs, schedule updates, inspection results, and written notices that track the contract’s language. Contractors pursuing payment or time relief should answer default notices in writing within the cure window, even when a notice is wrong on the facts, because silence can damage the later claim. Every claimant should confirm the contract’s notice address, delivery method, and cure period before sending anything. We review these situations at the notice stage because the first written notice can shape the case.

If your contractor took your money and walked

Abandonment cases follow a pattern, and Florida gives owners specific statutory tools. The sequence we recommend:

• Document the site before anything changes. Photograph and video every area of the work, including materials on site. Pull the permit history from your county’s building department portal. Assemble every payment record: checks, transfers, financing draws.
• Verify the license. Check the contractor on the Florida DBPR license portal. If the contractor was unlicensed for the work, section 489.128, Florida Statutes makes the contract unenforceable by the contractor (in court or in arbitration), which changes the entire posture of the dispute. Our unlicensed contractor page covers the remedies that follow.
• Use the deposit statute. Under section 489.126, a contractor who takes an initial payment of more than 10 percent of the contract price on residential work must apply for the necessary permits within 30 days after payment and start the work within 90 days after all permits issue, absent just cause or a written agreement extending those periods. The statute prescribes a written demand procedure, and a contractor who ignores a proper demand faces criminal exposure in addition to civil liability. The demand letter has required elements. Get it right the first time.
• Send the default notice the contract requires. Even in a clear abandonment, follow the contract’s notice-and-cure procedure before hiring a replacement. It costs days and protects the entire claim.
• Get real completion bids. Written bids from licensed local contractors establish your cost to complete: the core of your damages. Two or three independent bids are far more persuasive than one, and far more persuasive than a software estimate.
• Watch for liens. Subcontractors and suppliers the contractor failed to pay may have lien rights against your property even though you paid the contractor. A “Notice to Owner” (a statutory form telling you an unpaid party is working on your project) is the early warning. Do not make further payments, especially any final payment, without advice; Florida’s lien law conditions final payment on a contractor’s final payment affidavit for good reason.

One more pattern deserves its own paragraph. Many Tampa Bay contract disputes trace back to a storm: the repair was funded by an insurance claim, the carrier’s payment came in below the real cost of the work, and the contract stalled when the money ran out. If the true bottleneck is the insurance company rather than the contractor, the contract fight is downstream of a coverage fight: our property insurance claims practice handles that side, and resolving it often unlocks the construction problem.

If you were terminated, or the owner will not let you finish

Contractors and subcontractors on the receiving end of a termination have two tracks to protect at once, and they run on different clocks.

The first track is the contract claim. Respond to the termination or default notice in writing, on time, with your position on the facts: what was complete, what was paid, what the owner failed to provide. Preserve your job file: pay applications, daily logs, delivery tickets, texts, and photographs of the work as you left it. Do not remove installed materials from the site; doing so can convert your breach claim into the owner’s. And document your termination costs as they occur: demobilization, committed material orders you cannot cancel, and subcontractor cancellation charges.

The second track is lien and payment rights, and it does not wait for the dispute to resolve. Under Florida’s Construction Lien Law, a claim of lien must be recorded within 90 days of your final furnishing of labor or materials (section 713.08), and a termination usually starts that clock. Subcontractors and suppliers without a direct contract with the owner must have served a Notice to Owner within 45 days of first furnishing to have lien rights at all (section 713.06), and a recorded lien must be enforced by suit within one year (section 713.22). Run your dates through our construction lien deadline calculator now, then confirm them with counsel: these deadlines are unforgiving, and our construction lien page explains the full sequence.

Deadlines that control a Florida construction contract claim

The limitation periods below are the outer walls. Contractual notice provisions sit far inside them and can waive a claim in days.

Three cautions. First, “from the breach” is not always obvious: a project can involve multiple breaches with multiple accrual dates, and picking the wrong one can cost the claim. Second, since Florida’s 2023 tort reform, negligence claims accruing after March 24, 2023 carry a 2-year limitation period, so companion theories that once traveled with a contract claim may expire years earlier. Third, claims about defective work run on the separate defect timetable, a 4-year statute of limitations and a 7-year statute of repose, covered on our construction defects pages. Deadlines shift with facts and with legislative amendments; verify yours with a lawyer rather than a webpage, including this one. The lien deadline calculator handles the lien-specific dates.

What the case is worth

For owners, the standard measure is the reasonable cost to complete or correct the work, minus whatever remains unpaid on the contract price. If your contract was $200,000, you paid $120,000, and licensed contractors bid $150,000 to finish the job, the arithmetic is straightforward: the fight is over whether the completion bids are reasonable and whether the scope matches. This is where our approach earns its keep: we check completion numbers against real bids from licensed local contractors, line by line, not against estimating software alone. Deposits paid for work never performed, re-permitting fees, and certain carrying costs may be recoverable as well, subject to any waiver of consequential damages in the contract.

For contractors, damages typically start with the unpaid value of work performed, including retainage, plus demobilization and committed costs. A contractor terminated wrongfully for cause may also recover lost profit on the unperformed balance of the work; a contractor terminated for convenience usually may not, because convenience clauses ordinarily limit recovery to work performed plus costs. Which clause governs (and whether the termination complied with it) is often the whole case.

Two related items get one paragraph each because they have their own pages. Delay damages compensate for time: an owner may claim liquidated damages (a pre-agreed daily amount for late completion) while a contractor may claim extended general conditions and acceleration costs when the owner caused the delay. Proving delay is a records exercise built on schedules and daily logs, and our construction delay claim page covers it. Disputed extras and unsigned change orders are valued through the change-order clause and the conduct of the parties; our change order dispute page covers that.

Both sides carry a duty to mitigate, to take reasonable steps to keep damages from growing. An owner who lets a half-finished roof sit open through a rainy season, or a contractor who keeps ordering materials after a clear termination, will face that argument. Document what you did to limit the harm; it is part of the claim.

The defenses that decide these cases

Every performance dispute is really two competing breach stories, and the defenses matter as much as the claims. The ones that come up again and again:

• Material versus minor breach. Only a material breach (one going to the essence of the contract) justifies terminating and walking away. Florida’s substantial performance doctrine protects a contractor who completed the job with minor deviations: the owner still owes the price, less the cost of correcting the shortfalls. Punch-list items are not grounds for termination.
• Prior breach. The party who committed the first material breach generally cannot enforce the contract against the other. Establishing who broke it first (with dated records, not recollections) is often the whole fight.
• Prevention. A party cannot claim breach for nonperformance it caused. An owner who blocked access or withheld decisions cannot then default the contractor for the resulting delay.
• Waiver. Conduct can forfeit rights the contract grants. An owner who kept paying draws with full knowledge of schedule slippage may have waived strict deadlines; a contractor who performed changed work for months without written change orders may struggle to enforce the change-order clause later.
• Conditions precedent. If the contract makes a written notice a precondition to a claim, missing the notice can bar the claim entirely: the mirror image of the notice deadlines in the table above.

We evaluate both sides’ stories against the documents before recommending a strategy, because the record usually tells us which of these defenses will land.

Who pays the attorney fees

Florida construction contracts commonly include a prevailing-party fee clause: the loser pays the winner’s reasonable attorney fees. Two things about these clauses matter more than most people expect. First, under section 57.105(7), Florida Statutes, a one-sided fee clause is read as reciprocal: if the contract gives fees to the contractor, the owner can recover them too, and vice versa. Second, fee exposure runs both directions, which means the decision to litigate is partly an underwriting decision: a weak claim in a fee-shifting contract can cost more than the dispute. Lien foreclosure actions carry their own prevailing-party fee statute. We walk through this calculus in our answer to who pays attorney fees in a construction case.

Our billing follows the case, honestly. Contractor-side performance disputes are typically handled hourly or on flat-fee stages, with fee-shifting pursued where the contract or statute provides it. Owner-side cases are sometimes a fit for hybrid or contingency arrangements depending on the claim and the collectability of the other side. We tell you which model fits (and what the fee clause in your contract means for you) at the initial consultation, which is free.

How we work these cases

Cory Cannon was founded by a Florida attorney with a family history in construction for generations. That upbringing shapes how we litigate: we read pay applications, schedules of values, permit histories, and daily logs the way the people who wrote them do, and we can usually tell you within the first meeting whether a “default” described in a termination letter matches what the documents show. When a dispute turns on structural work or code compliance, we retain independent licensed engineers to evaluate it: opinions we can put in front of a judge, a jury, or an arbitrator.

If you are still deciding whether you have a case at all, our plain-English guide, Can I sue my contractor in Florida?, walks through the options before anyone files anything. And if your question is how long this takes, we answer that honestly in our construction lawsuit timeline FAQ.

Where we handle these disputes

We bring affirmative construction claims for owners, contractors, and subcontractors in the circuit and county courts of Hillsborough, Pinellas, Manatee, and Sarasota counties (Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Brandon, Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, and the communities between) and in arbitration when the contract requires it. Residential, commercial, and association projects all follow the same contract principles; association-specific issues are covered on our HOA and condo construction dispute page.

A word on arbitration, because many Florida residential construction contracts require it. Arbitration is a private process where an arbitrator (usually a construction lawyer or retired judge) decides the case instead of a jury. It is typically faster than circuit court and harder to appeal, and the filing fees are front-loaded. An arbitration clause is generally enforceable, so the time to weigh it is before signing, not after the dispute starts. If your contract has one, it changes the forum and the timeline, not the substance of your rights: the notice provisions, deadlines, and damages principles on this page apply either way.

Talk to us before positions harden

Most construction contract disputes are won or lost in the first thirty days: in the notices sent, the records preserved, and the deadlines met or missed. If a contractor has stopped performing, or you have been terminated from a project, bring us the contract, the change orders, the pay applications, the photographs, and the correspondence. We will tell you what the contract actually requires, what your claim is worth, and what it will cost to pursue. Contact us for a free consultation.