I’m unsure if it’s now too late to say this, but happy New Year to you all. I signed-off 2013 by talking about my fear of Christmas games. Well, I can proudly say that I was on the winning team in a game of Articulate (I was also on two losing teams but let’s not go there). It made my Christmas. Anyway, I digress.
Adjudicators, arbitrators and judges have to be careful in the language they use in decisions, awards and judgments, particularly when they are dismissing weak points. For example, you might see an adjudicator write something along the lines of “I have difficulty in accepting X’s case on this point because…”. What the adjudicator might actually be thinking is “you can’t seriously expect me to find for you on this point because…” or, as I heard a site agent so eloquently put it at a recent adjudication meeting, “you’re having a giraffe”. Some adjudicators might go further in criticising parties or their representatives, but personally I tend to steer clear of this manner of drafting.
Another area where approaches differ is the amount of comment an adjudicator might include in a decision which is not strictly necessary to the outcome of that decision. I was interested to see that this is what the adjudicator did in Alexander & Law v Coveside. Continue reading
