Judicial Admission Made In Unverified Complaint Against General Contractor.

This is the scenario: A homeowner sued a general contractor, alleging shoddy work. In his unverified complaint, the homeowner alleged the contractor was licensed at all times. The general contractor responded with a cross-complaint for unpaid work.  A local rule required plaintiff to identify all controverted issues, and plaintiff did not identify licensure as a controverted issue. Seeing no licensure issue, the contractor did not obtain a verified certificate of licensure from the Contractors’ State Board, a process which takes at least six days. When the contractor was about to rest his case on his cross-complaint, the homeowner’s lawyer moved for nonsuit based on the absence of a verified certificate as required by Business and Professions Code section 7031, subsection (d),which requires such a certificate when licensure is a controverted issue. The court entered judgment in favor of the homeowner based on the absence of the contractor introducing a certificate of licensure. The appellate court reversed, stating: “We conclude this is one of those relatively rare cases where a party can be bound by a judicial admission made in an unverified complaint. [] Here, the judicial admission that the general contractor was licensed, compounded by the homeowner’s failure to comply with the local rule requiring identification of all controverted issues, rendered the question of licensure assuredly uncontroverted for purposes of section 7031.” (Womack v. Lovell (Cal. App. Fourth, Div. 3; June 15, 2015) 237 Cal.App.4th 772 [188 Cal.Rptr.3d 471].)