Townsend v. Barlow

The plaintiffs made two principal claims: first, that the written waiver of lien on its face waives only the plaintiffs’ lien or right of lien for “work done, ” and does not operate as a relinquishment of the right of lien for work to be done, and second, that the court erred in refusing to allow the plaintiffs to prove the circumstances under which it was executed, and the purposes for which it was intended, in order to ascertain its true intent.

By way of introduction to these claims, it is argued that the word “waiver” has no definite and rigid meaning in the law, and that is quite true.…