Posts by Edward Davies

  • Retention of title revisited

    We all have our favourite points when it comes to contract drafting. Some people are busy thinking up solutions to the conundrum of concurrent causes of delay. Others focus on how reasonable skill and care limitations can survive in complex contracts. Some purchasers of construction services have a policy of not paying out more than … Continue reading Retention of title revisited

  • Who knows where the time goes?

    Einstein famously said that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. The nature of time is not an easy concept to grapple with and I had a similar (albeit not quite so ethereal) experience preparing a recent seminar on the practical effect of the decision in Carillion Construction v … Continue reading Who knows where the time goes?

  • The Referendum, law, medicine and science

    Over the past month or so there has been much accusation, from both sides of the Referendum debate, that the other side is making misleading or untrue statements. I went through a thought process about this which started with me thinking, rather smugly, that law isn’t like politics.

  • Reflections on agile working

    I read somewhere that fifty-somethings are the most flexible workers – and not just in the legal profession. My fifty-something postman is a retired Royal Marine and the sixty-something Tesco delivery man recently retired from a desk-bound office job. We are now told that “agile is the new flexible” and people write about it as … Continue reading Reflections on agile working

  • Not solving every problem

    They say that the UK has weather instead of a climate. Here in Panama City, there is definitely a climate. The temperature is in the mid-thirties (Celsius) every day regardless of the season. For eight months it is rainy, very rainy, with frequent thunderstorms. The record was set in 2002 when 562 mm of rain … Continue reading Not solving every problem

  • Is your job to warn or to prevent?

    Spam, scam and getting in a jam… I recently received an email offering me what looked like a tasty piece of work, but a longer look at the email made me realise that it was a scam.

  • How to start a project

    There is nothing more exciting for a lawyer than the first meeting on a new project.  Cynics would say that it’s all “downhill” from that point on, or “uphill” if you prefer the (more topical) cycling metaphor. But let’s stick with the positive. The enjoyment is twofold: The pleasure of winning or being entrusted with … Continue reading How to start a project

  • Fitness for purpose: the case against

    There has been a great deal of debate about fitness for purpose v reasonable skill and care in these columns. This is a look at the topic from a slightly different point of view.

  • How to settle a dispute

    Another Saturday afternoon in Panama (I’ll be permanently back in the UK at the end of October), and I am sitting on the balcony again with the ubiquitous milky coffee. But instead of staring out into the Pacific and letting my mind wander I’ve been reading Tony Blair’s book. Whether or not you are a … Continue reading How to settle a dispute

  • Can the adjudicator be in repudiatory breach of contract?

    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?

  • The future: nuclear or bust?

    Energy and water security are thought by many to be the biggest challenges facing the world. Climate change, although even bigger, is a little further away. The problem is how to fix the first two, now, without making the third one even worse.

  • Exceeding the speed limit: time in adjudication

    In September last year, under the heading unreasonable skill and care, I looked at the dilemma facing professional people who need to strike a balance between giving advice in the timescale required and taking long enough to be as confident as they can be that the advice is correct.

  • No abuse please

    I read an interesting article in the Law Society Gazette by Masood Ahmed about enforcing judgments.

  • Defects and exclusive remedies clauses

    Many people worry about making errors because they think are not clever enough to realise that what they are doing is wrong or incorrect. In fact, the majority of errors are simple ones.