The sub-sues-the-GC story usually runs while it is still a complaint, and this desk's rule is that a complaint is a claim, not a fact. This one is different. It went to a bench trial, the judge ruled, and the subs won. Kingdom Associates Inc. and New York Concrete Corp. v. JDS Construction Group LLC, 9 DeKalb Owner LLC, and Atlantic Specialty Insurance Company, Index No. 513652/2018, Supreme Court, Kings County. Justice Francois A. Rivera issued the decision, order, and judgment on January 13, 2026, and an amended judgment on April 28. Whether the defendants have appealed is not in the record we have.

The job. The court's findings, adopted after a three-day nonjury trial in November 2024, lay it out. 9 DeKalb Owner LLC owned 340 Flatbush Avenue Extension and 9 DeKalb Avenue; JDS Construction Group LLC was construction manager for the Brooklyn Tower, "a new, 1000-foot-tall mixed-use building." JDS is owned by Michael Stern, also a principal of 9 DeKalb. On January 13, 2017, Kingdom, a Maspeth foundation contractor, signed a trade contract with JDS for piles, support of excavation, caissons, and foundation concrete at a base price of $22,127,184. The same day, Kingdom subcontracted the drilling scope to New York Concrete Corp., described in the findings as a certified Woman-Owned Business Enterprise whose president is DonnaMarie Russo, for $15,069,145. A joint-check agreement had JDS paying NY Concrete directly, credited against what JDS owed Kingdom.

“After the MTA building was demolished, JDS never directed or demanded that Kingdom and NY Concrete return to the site to continue their work or told them that phase two was ready for them.”

What went wrong. The work was phased. Phase two, the bulk of the caissons and the secant wall, could not start until a building the MTA occupied on the site was demolished. Per the findings, the delay "lasted for more than one (1) year, from approximately the spring of 2017 to the fall of 2018." JDS directed NY Concrete to demobilize in spring 2017 and issued a purchase order for $370,000 to demobilize and $475,000 to remobilize. On April 11, 2018, Kingdom's president met Stern in Manhattan; the court found Stern "agreed to pay $1,500,000 to NY Concrete and $800,000 to Kingdom" for delay costs, and noted "Stern did not testify at trial to dispute this agreement." The judgment does not award those two sums; they are findings about what was agreed, not part of the damages. Then: "After the MTA building was demolished, JDS never directed or demanded that Kingdom and NY Concrete return to the site." They passed by the site and saw that another contractor, Linde-Griffith, had been hired to complete their work. No termination notice, no default notice, no complaint about their work. The defendants called no witnesses.

What the court awarded. The plaintiffs' post-trial brief asked the court to treat the pleadings as amended to the proof so that Kingdom would be owed $1,869,907.23 and NY Concrete $3,845,727.29 in contract, or, failing that, to award Kingdom the full $5,715,634.52 and let it pass $3,845,727.29 through to NY Concrete. The court declined to amend the pleadings "in the absence of a notice of motion for such relief," and took neither route. Instead, from the January 13 decision: "The claim of Kingdom Associates, Inc. for breach of contract asserted against 9 Dekalb and JDS Construction Group LLC is established, and it is awarded damages in the amount of $1,869,907.23 with pre-judgment interest retroactive to July 13, 2018, the date the instant action was commenced, and the date the mechanic's lien was filed." That figure is the base contract balance, three change orders, $477,150 in unreimbursed insurance, and $1,013,733.65 in lost profit, less $213,007.50 already paid.

NY Concrete's contract claim was dismissed because it had no contract with the owner or JDS; its deal was with Kingdom. But the court found it "was working directly for and at the direction of the owner" and let it recover in quasi-contract: "The claim by New York Concrete Corp. against 9 Dekalb and JDS Construction Group LLC is established, and it is awarded damages in the amount of $2,044,234.29 with pre-judgment interest retroactive to July 3, 2018." That is the $1,466,234.29 unpaid subcontract balance plus $578,000 for specially manufactured casing ring bits and pilot bits bought for a phase that never came. Its $1,801,493 lost-profit claim was out: "Nor may it seek its lost profits from the defendants under an unjust enrichment theory as that item of damage is not available under a theory of unjust enrichment." Both subs' account-stated claims were dismissed. Combined awards: $3,914,141.52, plus roughly seven and a half years of interest. One thing to flag in the judgment as entered: the two interest start dates differ by ten days, and the opinion describes each as the date the action was commenced, which its own background section puts at July 3, 2018. We are quoting the decretal language exactly as the court wrote it in both the January and April versions.

The defendants had counterclaimed under Lien Law 39-a, arguing both subs willfully exaggerated their mechanic's liens. Dismissed. The court noted the defendants "called no witnesses and produced no sworn testimony in support of its counterclaim," while the plaintiffs "provided reasonable explanations for the itemized figures" and for "some mistakes or errors pertaining to the inclusion of arguably non-lienable amounts."

The April amendment. The January decision called the lien-foreclosure claims "academic" because both liens had been bonded off. The April 28 amended judgment changed that and added awards against the surety: Kingdom "is awarded damages against 9 Dekalb and Atlantic, jointly and severally, in the amount $856,173.58, plus interest from June 29, 2018," and NY Concrete the same, "in the amount $2,044,234.29, plus interest from June 29, 2018." The opinion does not say why it was amended, and it does not say whether these awards stack on top of the contract and unjust-enrichment awards. Its own arithmetic says they overlap: the findings define Kingdom's $856,173.58 lien as the unpaid contract balance plus the unreimbursed insurance, both of which are already inside the $1,869,907.23, and NY Concrete's lien award is the same $2,044,234.29 it was awarded in quasi-contract. Read it as the same debt, now also enforceable against the surety — but that is our reading of the numbers, not a sentence in the judgment, and how it gets applied at collection is between the parties and the clerk.

Why this matters to you. Four lessons, all straight from the opinion. One: phased contracts. Both subs' prices assumed one mobilization and one demobilization. When JDS chose to send NY Concrete home rather than pay standby, it signed a purchase order for the demobilization and the return trip; the demobilization charge is inside the unpaid balance the court awarded, and the return trip never happened. If your scope depends on someone else clearing the site, write what happens when they do not. Two: the defendants argued the contract barred delay damages. The court's entire answer was one sentence: the claims were for breach of the agreements, "not due to any delays on the project site." The opinion does not analyze the clause beyond that. The practical read is that a delay bar did not reach a claim that the owner replaced the sub without notice — on this record, before this judge. Three: the lien and the bond. Kingdom liened for $856,173.58 on June 29, 2018; 9 DeKalb bonded it off at 110 percent, $941,790.94, with Atlantic as surety. The lien came off the building and attached to the bond, and the judgment now runs against the surety. That is how a lien is supposed to work, and it is why you file it on time even when the owner has a bonding company on speed dial. Four: unjust enrichment. NY Concrete had no contract with the people who did not pay it. It still recovered its unpaid balance and its special-order materials, because the court found it was working at the owner's direction. What it could not recover that way was profit. If you are a second-tier sub taking direction straight from the CM, that is the line: your costs may come back to you, your margin on the work you never got to do will not.

What to do next. Keep the paper. The findings rest on emails, pencil requisitions, a signed purchase order, and a meeting summary sent five days after the meeting. Seven years later, that is what won. And file the lien inside the deadline. The bond is the reason two subs hold a judgment against an insurance company as well as an LLC.