Washington Wage Lien Must Name Each Worker, Court Rules

Washington Wage Liens Must Name the Workers Who Served the Property, Appeals Court Rules

Washington's Court of Appeals, Division One, held on October 12, 2026 that class representatives may record wage liens for absent class members who hold valid lien rights, but held two recorded liens unauthorized because neither named a single worker who had actually served the buildings. The court reversed the denial of the owners' motion to dismiss, directed that the supplemental complaint be dismissed, and remanded.

Information last verified on October 13, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: Published opinion filed October 12, 2026 by Division One on discretionary review; reversed and remanded. A motion for reconsideration or a petition for review to the Washington Supreme Court remains possible as of October 13, 2026.

Jurisdiction scope: Washington State only. Chapter 60.90 RCW is a Washington statute and this opinion binds Washington trial courts. Other states that permit wage liens do so under their own statutes with different content requirements, and nothing in this decision addresses federal law.

What Happened

Andrew Radulescu worked as an hourly security officer for West Coast Security from April to June 2021. Justin Green held the same job from the fall of 2018 to January 2019.

The two sued West Coast Security, West Coast Security Concepts Inc. and Anthony Lombardi, pleading eight claims. Those included missed rest and meal periods under RCW 49.12.020, underpayment under state law and Seattle's minimum wage and wage theft ordinances, unlawful deductions and unreimbursed business expenses, unpaid wages on termination under chapter 49.48 RCW, willful refusal to pay wages under RCW 49.52.050, plus wrongful discharge and retaliation claims specific to Radulescu.

The employer defaulted. The superior court then certified a class, without opposition, covering all current and former hourly employees who worked for the three defendants as security guards or officers from August 9, 2018 through 90 days before final resolution of the case, who were based or resided in Washington during that employment, and for whom the plaintiffs timely obtained last known contact information. It appointed Radulescu and Green as class representatives.

Damages were reconstructed from incomplete records. A paralegal at class counsel's firm pulled payroll data from third party timekeeping vendors, combined it with a partial employee list from Lombardi, and ran calculations that, in his own words, had to "extrapolate" for periods where data were missing in order to estimate the average unpaid wages owed to each class member per class week. The court entered a default judgment of $2,642,144.36.

Collecting that judgment is where chapter 60.90 RCW came in. The plaintiffs asked the court for authority to obtain and distribute funds on behalf of the class under the Wage Recovery Act, arguing that their data showed which location each class member worked for every shift, so per-property damages were calculable. The court granted the motion.

They then recorded liens against two apartment properties. Each lien identified the claimants only as Radulescu and Green, each "on his own behalf and on behalf of all others similarly situated," care of class counsel's name, address and phone number. The Portsmith lien claimed $40,507.61 and the Sunrise Lane lien claimed $18,819.49. As the opinion records, it was undisputed that neither man had ever worked at either building.

The property owners moved to dismiss the supplemental complaint under CR 12(b)(6). They argued the plaintiffs had to strictly comply with the act, that the plaintiffs had not maintained the properties, that the liens identified no class member who had, that they did not say who assigned the claims, and that they omitted the claimants' own contact details.

The superior court sided with the workers. Reasoning that absent class members could not act individually, it concluded the representatives were the only people who could record a lien for the class, and that the notices substantially complied with a statute the legislature meant to be construed liberally. Division One granted discretionary review and disagreed in part.

The opinion's framing is compact: "We hold that class representatives may record a wage lien on behalf of those class members having valid lien rights and that the wage lien must comply with the content requirements of RCW 60.90.030."

On the first half, the court rejected the owners' negative inference argument. The owners pointed out that RCW 60.90.070(6) expressly lets a class representative bring a foreclosure action while RCW 60.90.030 says only that the "lien claimant" must record, and asked the court to treat that silence as deliberate exclusion. The court read the chapter as a whole instead. Because section .070 lists a class representative as one species of "representative of the employee," and because the model lien form in RCW 60.90.030(4) expressly contemplates a representative signing for a claimant, the court found it would be a strained reading to say the same word excluded class representatives in one section and included them in another. It also noted the owners offered no reason the legislature would allow class foreclosure only after every class member had recorded a lien one by one.

On the second half, the liens failed on their face. The defect was not the use of a representative. It was the absence of the people with the substantive right.

A wage lien on property the worker serviced exists only in favor of the person who did the servicing: RCW 60.90.020(1)(a)(iv) gives a lien on any Washington real property "that the wage claimant has maintained," for wage claims tied to that maintenance. RCW 60.90.010(11) defines maintaining broadly, covering cleaning, managing, improving, protecting, repairing, monitoring and restoring real property at the instance of the owner or tenant, or of any person acting by the owner's or tenant's authority. The opinion quotes that definition without deciding whether the guards' work met it, and frames its first holding as reaching class members having valid lien rights. The court's point was narrower: whoever holds the right, it belongs to the worker who served that property, property by property.

The recorded liens never identified those guards. They named the two representatives, on behalf of unnamed others, and left the owners with no way to know whose work allegedly encumbered their title. The same statutory language that lets a representative act, the court reasoned, also marks the representative as someone separate from the claimant who holds the right.

The court was blunt about what representative status does and does not do. "While the WRA contemplates enforcement through a class action lawsuit, it does not make the class representative the claimant of the substantive right nor eliminate the requirement that the recorded lien give the owner of the property on which the lien is being recorded information about the facts giving rise to the encumbrance. This includes the identity of the person alleged to have maintained the property."

The court added a structural reason. Chapter 60.90 RCW runs on short fuses: a lien is extinguished if the underlying wage action is not brought within eight months of recording, and an owner may move for a show cause hearing to test whether a lien is frivolous or clearly excessive. An owner who cannot tell from the notice who claims to have worked on the property cannot meaningfully use either mechanism, so content failures impair the summary resolution the legislature built in.

Because the liens did not comply with RCW 60.90.030, they were not authorized under RCW 60.90.020. The court reversed the denial of the CR 12(b)(6) motion, directed dismissal of the supplemental complaint, and remanded. It declined to reach the remaining issues raised by the parties or amici. The opinion is a majority opinion with no separate concurrence or dissent.

What the Law Actually Says

The Washington Wage Recovery Act is recent. Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5355 passed the Senate 25 to 24 on March 9, 2021, cleared the House on April 6, was approved by the governor on April 16, and took effect January 1, 2022 as chapter 102, Laws of 2021.

What it created works differently from the usual state wage remedy. Unpaid wage enforcement ordinarily runs as a judgment hunt: you win, then you chase assets, and tools like wage garnishment run in the opposite direction, aimed at a debtor's paycheck rather than at real estate. The Wage Recovery Act instead hands a worker a lien, which is a property interest recorded against title.

RCW 60.90.020(1)(a) gives any employee other than a highly compensated employee, who complies with RCW 60.90.030, a wage lien on four categories. Three attach to the employer's own assets: Washington real property the employer owns or later acquires, goods and tangible chattel paper, and accounts and payment intangibles. The fourth is the one at issue here, reaching any Washington real property the wage claimant has maintained, for wage claims arising from that maintenance. That fourth category is why apartment owners who never employed the guards found liens on their buildings.

A "wage claim" under RCW 60.90.010(14) is broader than base pay. It covers unpaid wages plus other compensation, interest, statutory and liquidated damages, attorney fees and costs and statutory penalties owed for violating a local, state or federal wage law, with a list of chapters that includes the prevailing wage, hours, minimum wage, wage payment and wage rebate statutes, as well as the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that sets the national wage floor. Vacation pay, severance, benefit plan contributions and non-mandated paid leave are excluded.

RCW 60.90.030(1) is the perfection provision the liens flunked. To establish a lien on real property, the claimant must record a notice of claim of wage lien in the county where the property sits, containing seven items:

1. The name, telephone number and address of the lien claimant, plus the name of the assignor if the lien was assigned.
2. The name of the employer.
3. The street address, legal description and parcel number of the property.
4. The name of the owner or reputed owner if known, or a statement that it is not known.
5. The principal amount claimed.
6. The signature of the claimant or of a person authorized to act on the claimant's behalf.
7. The acknowledgment and certification set out in RCW 60.90.030(4).

The claimant must also pay the county auditor's filing fee and mail a copy by certified mail with return receipt requested to the employer's registered agent, registered business address or residence, and to the property owner if known and different from the employer.

Item six is where representative filing lives, and the model form in subsection (4) makes it concrete. The form has a numbered line for the name, telephone number and address of the lien claimant, and a separate line for a signer who is not the claimant but is authorized to act for one, asking for that person's name and representative capacity with examples such as officer or employee of the claimant, attorney or agent, lien filing service representative, or administrator or agent of employee benefit plan trustees. Read together, those two lines are the architecture the court applied: the claimant goes on one line, the representative on another. Putting the representatives' names in the claimant's line, as these filings did, does not identify the claimant.

The sworn acknowledgment in that form is not boilerplate. The signer, under oath, states a belief under penalty of perjury that the claim is true and correct, and a belief that it is not frivolous, is made with reasonable cause, and is not clearly excessive.

The timing rules are tight in both directions. A notice must be filed within two years of when the wages first came due, under RCW 60.90.030(6). Once recorded, the lien is extinguished under RCW 60.90.090(1)(a) if the underlying wage action is not brought within eight months of recording, or if the notice of pendency required by RCW 60.90.060 is not recorded in that same window. An action to foreclose generally cannot start more than eight months after recording, under RCW 60.90.070(2). When a lien is extinguished, the claimant has 15 days to record a release, and a claimant who unreasonably and in bad faith refuses can be ordered to pay the other side's fees and a fine of up to $1,000.

The statute also gives owners a fast off-ramp. Under RCW 60.90.130, an owner, lender or competing lien claimant who believes a lien is frivolous and made without reasonable cause, or clearly excessive, may move for an order making the claimant appear and show cause no earlier than six and no later than 15 days after service. If the court agrees, it releases or reduces the lien and awards costs and reasonable attorney fees against the claimant. If the court disagrees, fees run the other way.

Foreclosure, when it happens, is a judicial action under RCW 60.90.070. Real property foreclosures go to superior court, or to federal district court when the United States Department of Labor brings the action. Under RCW 60.90.080(1), the owner must be joined, and anyone holding a recorded interest in the property before the action began cannot be foreclosed or affected unless joined as a party. Subsection (6) is the provision that carried the first half of this holding: a foreclosure action may be brought by the employee individually, the Department of Labor and Industries, a local government agency, the federal Department of Labor, the attorney general, or a representative of the employee including a collective bargaining representative or class representative. A prevailing claimant gets costs, recording and title report expenses, and reasonable fees.

One more provision framed the dispute below. RCW 60.90.901 directs that the chapter "be liberally construed to provide security for all persons intended to be protected by its provisions." The superior court found substantial compliance partly on that premise, noting what the opinion describes as legislative intent that the statute be liberally construed as an avenue for relief for wage claimants. Division One held the notices failed to comply or substantially comply with the content requirements. Its opinion does not cite RCW 60.90.901 or discuss liberal construction.

None of this changes the underlying employment relationship. Washington remains an at-will state, and the rules on when and how a job can end sit entirely outside the lien chapter, which is a collection tool for wages already earned. For how the baseline rule varies elsewhere, see our survey of at-will rules state by state.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

This opinion resolves two questions that pointed in opposite directions, and the practical weight sits on the second one.

The first question was institutional. Chapter 60.90 RCW was drafted with class enforcement in mind, since RCW 60.90.070(6) names class representatives in the foreclosure provision. Had the court ruled the other way, a certified class could have foreclosed liens it was structurally incapable of recording, because recording would have required every absent member to file individually first. The court's reading closes that gap without adding anything to the statute.

The second question was about notice, and the court answered it with the statutory text rather than with a policy about class actions. RCW 60.90.030(1)(a)(i) asks for the claimant's name, telephone number and address. The model form in subsection (4) puts the claimant and the authorized signer on different lines. These filings put the two class representatives in the claimant line, with class counsel's name, address and phone number, and described everyone else as all others similarly situated. The line meant to name the workers whose labor encumbered each building named no one who had worked there.

The court's reliance on the chapter's eight-month extinguishment period and its show cause procedure is the part worth noticing. Those are owner-side protections that only function if the recorded document says who is claiming what. An owner facing a lien recorded by two people who never set foot on the property has little to test at a show cause hearing. Reading a content requirement out of the statute would have quietly disabled a remedy the same statute grants.

There is also a question about liberal construction clauses, which the opinion leaves open. RCW 60.90.901 tells courts to construe the chapter liberally to provide security for protected persons, and the superior court treated that as room for substantial compliance. Division One did not cite that section or discuss liberal construction at all. It held the notices failed to comply or substantially comply because they named no class member who had maintained either property. The practical upshot is that the claimant's identity functions as an element rather than a formality, but the court did not reach the broader question of how far liberal construction can carry a defective notice.

Note what the opinion did not decide. The court expressly declined to reach the remaining issues raised by the parties and amici, so it did not address whether class-wide damages extrapolated from incomplete payroll data can support per-property lien amounts, nor how a representative should handle contact information for hundreds of individual claimants, nor the effect of the eight-month clock on liens that are re-recorded after a defect is cured. The dismissal is of the supplemental complaint against these property owners. The default judgment against the employer is a separate matter the opinion does not disturb.

We are not predicting any outcome on remand, on reconsideration, or on any petition for review. We will update this page if the record changes.

How This Affects You

If you are a Washington worker owed wages, the lien remedy survives this opinion and class representatives can still use it. What the decision requires is specificity in the recorded document, which means the names of the workers whose labor on a given property gives rise to the claim against that property.

If you own or manage Washington real property and a wage lien has appeared on title, the recorded notice is now the first thing to read closely. Chapter 60.90 RCW sets out what the notice must contain and gives owners a show cause procedure on a short clock, and this opinion holds that a notice omitting the claimant's identity does not comply.

If you are inside the eight-month window on either side of a lien, the calendar matters more than usual. RCW 60.90.030(6), RCW 60.90.070(2) and RCW 60.90.090(1)(a) set deadlines measured from when wages came due and from the date of recording, and missing one can extinguish a lien or forfeit a challenge.

This is general information about a published appellate decision and a Washington statute. It is not advice about any particular lien, property, wage claim or case, and whether a specific notice complies with RCW 60.90.030 depends on facts we do not have. A licensed Washington attorney can assess an individual situation.

This article is general legal information about a published Washington appellate decision and chapter 60.90 RCW. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and does not address any individual lien, property or wage claim. It covers Washington State law only and does not describe the law of any other state or of the United States generally. Information verified on October 13, 2026 against the court's opinion and the Revised Code of Washington.

Related articles

• Washington at-will employment rules
• At-will employment by state
• Washington workers' compensation basics
• Stopping a wage garnishment
• The federal minimum wage

Last updated: 2026-10-13. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-13.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the Washington Court of Appeals decide in Radulescu v. Portsmith Apartments?

In a published opinion filed October 12, 2026, Division One held that class representatives may record a wage lien under chapter 60.90 RCW for class members who have valid lien rights, but that the recorded lien must still satisfy the content requirements of RCW 60.90.030. Because the two liens at issue named no class member who had maintained either property, the court reversed the denial of the property owners' CR 12(b)(6) motion, directed dismissal of the supplemental complaint, and remanded.

Why did the recorded wage liens fail?

They did not identify the claimants. RCW 60.90.030(1)(a)(i) requires the name, telephone number and address of the lien claimant. The liens named only the two class representatives, on behalf of all others similarly situated, care of class counsel, and neither representative had ever worked at either building. The court held the claimant is the worker who maintained the property and is distinct from the representative acting on that worker's behalf.

What must a Washington wage lien notice on real property contain?

Under RCW 60.90.030(1)(a), a recorded notice must state the lien claimant's name, telephone number and address plus any assignor's name; the employer's name; the street address, legal description and parcel number of the property; the owner or reputed owner, or a statement that the owner is unknown; the principal amount claimed; the signature of the claimant or an authorized person; and the acknowledgment and certification in subsection (4). The claimant must also pay the auditor's filing fee and send copies by certified mail with return receipt requested.

Can a class representative sign a wage lien for other workers in Washington?

Yes, under this opinion. The court pointed to RCW 60.90.070(6), which lists a class representative among the representatives who may bring a foreclosure action, and to the model form in RCW 60.90.030(4), which contemplates a person signing on a claimant's behalf. Signing as a representative does not remove the requirement to identify the actual claimants in the notice.

Can a wage lien attach to property my employer does not own?

In Washington it can, in one specific situation. RCW 60.90.020(1)(a)(iv) gives a wage lien on any Washington real property the wage claimant has maintained, for wage claims arising from maintaining it. RCW 60.90.010(11) defines maintaining to include cleaning, managing, improving, protecting, repairing, monitoring and restoring real property at the instance of the owner or tenant, or of anyone acting by their authority. That fourth category is why apartment owners who never employed the security guards faced liens on their buildings. The court quoted the definition in this case without deciding whether the guards' work satisfied it.

How long does a Washington wage lien last?

A notice must be filed within two years of when the wages first came due under RCW 60.90.030(6). After recording, RCW 60.90.090(1)(a) extinguishes the lien if the underlying wage action is not brought within eight months of recording or if the notice of pendency required by RCW 60.90.060 is not recorded in that window, and RCW 60.90.070(2) generally bars a foreclosure action begun more than eight months after recording.

What can a property owner do about a wage lien they believe is improper?

RCW 60.90.130 lets an owner, lender or competing lien claimant move for an order requiring the lien claimant to appear and show cause, set no earlier than six and no later than 15 days after service, why the lien is not frivolous and without reasonable cause or clearly excessive. If the court agrees, it releases or reduces the lien and awards costs and reasonable attorney fees against the claimant. If the court disagrees, fees are awarded to the claimant instead.

Is this decision final?

Not necessarily. The opinion was filed October 12, 2026 and is published, so it is citable Washington authority, but as of October 13, 2026 a motion for reconsideration in Division One or a petition for review to the Washington Supreme Court remains procedurally possible. The case also returns to superior court on remand.

Does this ruling apply outside Washington?

No. Chapter 60.90 RCW is the Washington Wage Recovery Act, enacted as chapter 102, Laws of 2021 and effective January 1, 2022, and this opinion construes that statute only. Workers and owners in other states are governed by their own lien and wage statutes, which differ in who holds a lien, what the notice must say, and how long it lasts.