The High Cost of the Winehill Building
A multi-year legal battle over unpaid labor and stone work at the corner of Third and Main ends in a sudden dismissal.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The suit brought by Olin Co. against Gustave Winehill to recover $9,332 alleged to be due on a contract for furnishing material and doing the brick and stone work on the Winehill building at the corner of South Third and Main streets, was terminated suddenly yesterday afternoon by Judge Hellinger granting the defendant's motion for non-suit. The plaintiffs entered into a contract with Winehill nearly three years ago, stipulating that payments were to be made at certain stages of the work upon presentation of the architect's certificate and receipts showing all workmen had been paid. The contractors were unable to pay their workmen when the time came for a payment, relying on being first paid by Winehill. The latter refused to pay without the receipts, and the contractors quit work. They filed a lien on the building for some $14,000. Judge Hellinger held that the plaintiffs' attempt to amend their complaint to show a 'waiver' of the receipt clause would constitute a new complaint entirely, and granted the non-suit.
“The contractors were not able to pay their workmen when the time came for one of these payments to be made, they in fact, relying, as testimony went to show, upon being first paid by Winehill.”
Construction lien battles in Seattle are as old as the city itself. This dispute over whether the owner or the contractor bears the burden of upfront payment and worker compensation remains a central point of friction in the city's real estate development industry.
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