Today’s blog revolves around an owner of a company that has a professional license. The company will have a professional license typically through the owner or what’s called a qualifier. Let’s take an example of an owner who has a license suspended or revoked. Please note that I’m not picking on general contractors; I’m just using that as an example. Let’s say a general contractor has a license suspended or revoked, he’s the qualifier for the company. Can that license for the general contractor be used as a qualifier for the company? No, it cannot. “Alright, we’ll get somebody else as a qualifier. I’ll still own the company and I’ll be an employee, or I’ll be still listed under the corporation as the CEO or whatever other title that I have.” NO, you can’t do that. [NC Licensing Board for General Contractors Laws and Regulations]
Under North Carolina General Statue 55B-13, if an individual that is a licensed professional has a license that is suspended or revoked by the professional board or agency, that individual cannot be listed as any sort of officer with the company, and they cannot be an employee with the company. So, if the individual who has a license that’s suspended or revoked is still listed as an officer or still employed and not removed in a timely manner, then that puts the business entity in jeopardy. Take a different example, for general contractors (GCs) again, say somebody else is the qualifier, but one of the GCs that’s working there has a license suspended, nothing happens, and the person is still allowed to keep working there. That puts the company at jeopardy under the North Carolina Professional Corporation Act that I mentioned. So, you got to be very careful. It’s very important to protect your license. It’s very important to protect your employee’s license in certain examples.
*Nothing in this blog establishes an attorney-client relationship. Nothing in this blog is legal advice. If you have any questions, please check out our other blogs and our Youtube channel. You can also call us at 919-521-8810 with questions.