Grounds for CSLB Discipline: §§7107, 7109, and 7110 Explained

Section 7107 is about walking away. Section 7109 is about how the work was performed measured against a standard — either the trade’s standard or the project’s own drawings. Section 7110 is about compliance with law, as distinct from compliance with a plan or a workmanship standard.

That distinction is the practical key. The same job can generate a section 7109 exposure and no section 7110 exposure, or the reverse. A contractor who builds precisely to code but departs materially from the approved drawings has a section 7109 problem, not a section 7110 problem. A contractor who follows the drawings faithfully while those drawings violate the building code has a section 7110 problem that section 7109’s architect exception does not answer.

Section 7107 is the shortest of the three. Abandonment, without legal excuse, of any construction project or operation engaged in or undertaken by the licensee as a contractor is a cause for disciplinary action.

The operative words are “without legal excuse.” The provision does not make leaving a job actionable in itself; it makes leaving a job without a legally sufficient reason actionable. Non-payment, an owner’s material breach, denial of site access, and unsafe conditions are the categories contractors most often have in mind when they stop work — but whether any of them constitutes a legal excuse on particular facts is exactly the question a disciplinary proceeding would decide, and it is fact-specific.

What follows from that is a documentation point rather than a legal one. A contractor who stops work for a reason they believe is legally sufficient should be able to show, later and in writing, what the reason was and when it arose. A stoppage that is well justified but undocumented looks the same in a file as a stoppage that was not justified at all.

Section 7109 is frequently cited as though it were a single rule about workmanship. It is two rules, and they have different elements.

Subdivision (a) makes a willful departure, in any material respect, from accepted trade standards for good and workmanlike construction a cause for disciplinary action — unless the departure was in accordance with plans and specifications prepared by or under the direct supervision of an architect.

That closing clause is the most commercially significant sentence in the provision, and it is narrower than the way contractors typically describe it. It is not a general defense that “the architect approved it.” It applies where the departure from trade standards was itself in accordance with plans and specifications prepared by, or under the direct supervision of, an architect. Plans stamped by an engineer, drawings produced by a designer who is not an architect, or an architect’s verbal sign-off on a field change are not obviously within it. Nor does it reach subdivision (b) or section 7110.

Section 7110 reaches willful or deliberate disregard and violation of the building laws of the state or of any political subdivision, of safety or labor laws, of compensation insurance laws and the Unemployment Insurance Code, and of the Subletting and Subcontracting Fair Practice Act, along with violations of specified Health and Safety Code and Water Code provisions.

Two features distinguish it. First, its subject is legal compliance, not workmanship — the question is not whether the work met a trade standard but whether it violated a law. Second, and consequentially, section 7110 contains no counterpart to section 7109(a)’s architect exception. Building to architect-prepared plans is not, on the face of the statute, an answer to a charge that the completed work violated the building code.

For a contractor, that asymmetry is the single most useful takeaway on this page. Reliance on stamped drawings addresses one exposure and leaves another intact.

Three of the license law’s charging provisions turn on willfulness, and sections 7109 and 7110 are two of them. Contractors generally assume the word imports an intent to break the law — that the Board would have to show they knew the requirement and chose to violate it. The prevailing reading is less favorable than that: “willful” in this setting is generally understood to require only a general intent to do the act, not a specific intent to violate the license law or to cause harm. On that reading, a contractor who deliberately performed the work in the way it was performed can satisfy the element even if they believed the approach was acceptable.

This point should be held with some care, however. Commentary in this area notes that appellate decisions have not been uniform on what “willfulness” and materiality require under these provisions, and the term is not defined in the statute. The general-intent reading is the safer planning assumption for a contractor precisely because it is the less favorable one — but it is not a settled rule that this page can state as though the question were closed. Anyone facing an actual charge should have counsel assess which authorities apply to their facts.

Four things follow from the way these provisions are written: