The title may be adapted from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but it is a question often posed in adjudication. Should the adjudicator resign when he is invited to do so?
Most practitioners are familiar with the responding party inviting the adjudicator to resign, often citing jurisdictional reasons for the invitation, but what happens if it is the referring party that invites the adjudicator to resign? Should the outcome be any different to an invitation from the responding party? Continue reading
I’m a fan of Jeremy Clarkson and laugh along with the rest at his digs at the Prius.
Hybrids- not worth the effort – a good diesel will do the job better.
But I’m not sure you can deride hybrids in every arena. A project we’ve been working on has made me look hard at the merits of a blended approach to funding in public sector projects and wonder whether it offers more opportunities in our current market than straightforward PFI. Continue reading
Recently I wrote about “in writing” and how adjudicators deal with the issue of “is there a construction contract?”.
Shortly after that blog was posted, I was appointed in a dispute where the responding party challenged my jurisdiction, arguing that there was no construction contract as there was nothing in writing. The referring party denied this, arguing that the contract was “evidenced in writing” because there was a file note that set out the terms of the alleged agreement. Continue reading
The question screams bias to me. Certainly, if the question was the other way around (can a party’s expert subsequently act as an adjudicator on the same dispute), I doubt anyone would think anything other than apparent bias.
But is the answer so black and white? Continue reading
It’s a cloudy, warm and humid Saturday afternoon here in Panama City and I’ve been sitting on the balcony of my apartment gazing out into the Pacific Ocean and drinking a cup of milky coffee. There are about thirty ships in Panama Bay waiting to transit the canal, the Pacific entrance to which is about five miles from here and clearly visible. A dark red container ship is at the front of the queue and is slowly moving up the approach channel. On the far side of the canal entrance there is a huge build-up of clouds and I can see the occasional lightning flash, but the storm is too far away for me to be able to hear any thunder.
The HSE recently released its provisional offshore safety statistics for 2009/10 and the figures may raise some concern in the industry. The number of fatalities has risen (after a good year in 2008/9). In addition, the combined fatal and major injury rate rose for the first time since 2001/2. The numbers don’t look good, but what are the underlying issues for health and safety regulation in oil and gas, and for construction? Continue reading
Aristotle said:
“The end of labour is to gain leisure.”
August is traditionally the month when people take a holiday, and yet this month it has not been at all quiet on the legal front (although the furore over the judgment in City Inn v Shepherd seems to be over). Continue reading
Much has been written about section 107 of the Construction Act 1996 and the meaning of “in writing“, not to mention the myriad of case law on the point. In the last few years, a fair number of paragraphs have also been devoted to the changes in the LDEDC Act 2009 that, if they ever come into force, will delete section 107 and remove this requirement for construction contracts. Continue reading
Parties are free to agree that a dispute will be referred to adjudication, even if the Construction Act 1996 does not apply to their contract or there is no contractual adjudication clause. Such ad-hoc adjudications are nothing new. As HHJ Gilliland QC said (in Nordot Engineering Services Ltd v Siemens PLC, CILL September 2001), when drawing an analogy with arbitration:
“I can see no reason, as a matter of law, why parties cannot agree to abide by the decision of a third party if they so wish… why should it not be appropriate in the case of adjudication.” Continue reading
If there is a contract between the adjudicator and the parties (and case-law suggests that there is), can you apply all the usual rules of contract, including repudiation, to it? Could this give an aggrieved party a tactical advantage?
