All posts by busbyd

REUTERS | Damir Sagolj
June 29, 2010

Declaring your way around an adjudicator’s decision

In Bouygues v Dahl-Jensen, the Court of Appeal said:

“Adjudicators will make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes will be glaringly obvious and disastrous in their consequences for the losing party.”

Even though the possibility of making mistakes was recognised by the Court of Appeal (and both parties, as they agreed that the adjudicator had made a mistake), the court went on to hold that if an adjudicator makes a mistake, the decision will still be enforced unless the adjudicator answered the wrong question. Continue reading →

REUTERS | Lee Jae-Won
June 23, 2010

Giving notice under a construction contract – difficulties for companies?

A recent Court of Appeal decision set many construction practitioners thinking about how the parties communicate and give notices to each other. In particular, when a statute or contract requires a company to give a notice or sign a document, do the execution rules of the Companies Acts always apply? Continue reading →

REUTERS | Ognen Teofilovski
June 21, 2010

Don’t forget your contract terms need to be in writing

Will there ever come a time when parties can stop arguing over whether all of their contract terms are in writing?

Some may argue that this time will come (maybe next year) when the amendments to the Construction Act 1996 come into force. That’s because part of the proposed amendments do away with the section 107 requirements (agreements in writing). Continue reading →

REUTERS | Ina Fassbender
June 16, 2010

Liar liar, pants on fire

This may be a children’s playground taunt, most commonly associated with accusations of dishonesty (it is actually paraphrased from William Blake’s poem, “The Liar”) but, in recent months, the courts have dealt with a number of cases where one party has alleged the other is guilty of fraud (or something akin to fraud).  Continue reading →

REUTERS | Navesh Chitrakar
June 14, 2010

Low carbon domestic refurbishment

We all know that we need to improve energy use in new houses and buildings, so why should we care about existing housing stock? On 10 June, the Construction Products Association (CPA) published An Introduction to Low Carbon Domestic Refurbishment, a guide that answers that question and might even provide some inspiration for the wider construction industry.

Continue reading →

REUTERS | Petar Kujundzic
June 1, 2010

It’s probably easier to split hair than it is to split an adjudicator’s decision. Discuss.

The title sounds like an exam question, but is there any truth in the statement?

Since 2008 and the decision in Cantillon v Urvasco, the TCC has been considering the knotty problem of what to do with an adjudicator’s decision when part of the decision is unenforceable for some reason or other. Long gone are the days when it is a simple “all or nothing” on enforcement. Continue reading →

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