What happened: A Massachusetts court affirmed consumer protection damages after an equipment rental company filed mechanic’s liens nearly four times the fair rental value.
Who’s involved: Alliance Rental Group (equipment rental), Ivester Construction Corp. (contractor), Great Midwest Insurance Company (surety)
What’s at stake: $505,687 in consumer protection damages against Alliance, plus $585,505 in mechanic’s liens owed to Alliance
Why it matters: Mechanic’s liens can be technically valid under statute and still generate consumer protection liability when underlying charges are inflated
Where it stands: Affirmed by the Massachusetts Appeals Court on October 5, 2026; remanded for postjudgment interest calculation only
The equipment rental bills added up to nearly $700,000. The fair market value of actually using the machines was $180,000.
That gap landed Alliance Rental Group, LLC in a Massachusetts Appeals Court decision affirming consumer protection damage over what the trial court called “a scheme ... to extract money well beyond any commercially justifiable amount.”
In 2013, a property owner in North Reading contracted with Ivester Construction Corp. for subdivision work. Ivester rented an excavator and a loader from Alliance. The equipment sat idle for long stretches - a year waiting for a street permit, another for an electrical permit, seasonal construction bans, and trips off-site for repairs. Nobody kept daily use logs.
When Ivester failed to pay, Alliance filed mechanic’s liens totaling $697,479.06 against the property owner’s land - including charges for all the downtime and repairs. Great Midwest Insurance Company, acting as surety, bonded the liens.
The property owner sued in Middlesex Superior Court to dissolve the liens and claimed Alliance violated chapter 93A, the state’s business-to-business consumer protection statute. The trial court found $180,000 reflected fair rental value during actual use and that the inflated amounts were unfair and deceptive.
On a first appeal in 2023, the Appeals Court held the mechanic’s lien statute did not authorize reducing the liens to fair rental value - but affirmed the consumer protection finding and sent the case back to recalculate damages.
On remand, the court awarded $505,687 in consumer protection damages - $405,505 representing the excess above fair value, plus $100,182 in attorney’s fees. With prejudgment interest, the total reached $758,903.70.
Alliance argued the property owner suffered no real loss because he never transferred two building lots worth $900,000 to the contractor as originally agreed. The Appeals Court rejected that. A concrete monetary loss satisfies section 11 of chapter 93A regardless of other financial offsets.
The court also ruled Alliance is entitled to postjudgment interest on its $585,505 lien award from the original August 9, 2021 judgment - not the 2024 remand.
Mechanic’s liens can be technically valid under the statute and still carry substantial consumer protection exposure when the underlying charges are inflated - a point surety underwriters and construction claims teams will want to note.
