LICENSE SUSPENDED: Avoid This Contractor: Failed to Comply with CSLB Arbitration Award…read more
I am updating this review to warn other homeowners to check the California Contractors State License Board (CSLB) records before hiring LA Structural. As of March 2026, their license has been officially suspended due to their failure to comply with a legally binding arbitration award.
On October 22, 2024, LA Structural requested and collected full payment for the second contract (permit acquisition for all work listed in the first contract) before any permit-related work began. Note: This is a violation.
Despite full payment on November 26, 2024, none of the required permit finalizations occurred as promised, and the contractor stopped all permit-related work. Required tasks--such as coordinating inspections, correcting the soil compaction report rejected by LADBS, and managing final permit approvals--were not performed by LA Structural and were left entirely to me. I spent the following five months working directly with LADBS and city inspectors to complete these tasks.
During those five months, I identified two defective areas of work.
First, the soil compaction report was rejected due to LA Structural's circumvention of requirements. LA Structural hired a deputy instead of a third-party geotechnical engineer, bypassing the grading inspector's requirement and misleading me as the client after charging an additional fee for this engineer and report in November 2024. Consequently, in February 2025, Inspector Bonvouloir officially rejected the report. Later, Clark Inspections--the subcontractor hired by LA Structural--emailed me stating that LA Structural planned to use their in-house engineer to revise the soil compaction report, again attempting to bypass the requirement. I ultimately had to redo the soil compaction report through a licensed geotechnical engineer and resubmit it, after which it passed the city's review.
The second defective work involved the drainage pipe and was documented in the CSLB investigation report.
After 13 months of CSLB mediation, investigation, and site inspection, a mandatory arbitration hearing took place on January 22, 2026. The arbitrator ruled in my favor and ordered payment within 30 days. LA Structural failed to comply, resulting in their current license suspension. Notably, prior to the issuance of the stipulated arbitration award letter, the contractor repeatedly attempted to have me sign his own private settlement agreement--non-CSLB documents with terms that went beyond what had been agreed upon at the hearing. Don't sign it! I later learned that this is a common tactic contractors use to remove CSLB from the matter.
Per CSLB instruction, I filed a claim with their bond company, Jet Insurance, to recover the awarded payment. Despite their written commitment on February 11, 2026, to issue payment if the contractor failed to meet the CSLB deadline, Jet Insurance instead extended the deadline to March 27, 2026, stating that "the contractor intends to make payment by this week." LA Structural failed to meet this extended deadline as well.
On March 30, 2026, I received an email from Jet Insurance stating, "Attached is the Final Release and Assignment of Claim agreement, relating to the claim...In order to issue payment for this claim, Jet Insurance Company requires the attached agreement to be reviewed, physically signed and all pages returned." It has taken 16 months to recover my funds for their abandoned and defective work since their collection of full payment. Based on my understanding, when a bond company pays out a claim, the contractor's license remains suspended until specific legal and financial requirements are met for reinstatement.
