Construction Project Price Priority Compensation Right: Application Dilemmas, Interest Conflicts and Improvement Paths

Abstract

Article 807 of the Civil Code and related judicial interpretations grant the contractor the legal priority right, namely, the priority compensation right for project prices. This right is regarded as one of the legal guarantee mechanisms in civil and commercial law, and it is endowed with functions such as safeguarding the creditor’s rights of project prices, maintaining the order of the construction industry, and protecting the rights and interests of workers. However, in judicial practice, phenomena such as subcontracting, illegal subcontracting, subcontracting under false pretenses, and pre-sale housing financing keep emerging. The priority compensation right faces multiple dilemmas, including inconsistent determination of the subject scope, ambiguous requirements for the exercise procedure, and blurred positioning of the right nature. Based on this, this paper, based on existing representative research results, systematically examines the manifestations of these dilemmas and conflicts, analyzes the interest games among multiple subjects, and accordingly proposes an optimized institutional path that is in line with the actual situation of the construction market, with the aim of bridging the gap between norms and practice and promoting the standardized operation of the priority compensation right system.