Last Monday, TeCSA and TECBAR held their annual joint conference with an excellent line up of speakers, including Ramsey J, who gave an informative “state of the nation” talk on the TCC, and Akenhead J, who gave an entertaining and practical perspective on early neutral evaluation in the TCC. This post summarises the highlights from Akenhead J’s talk.
Keen followers of adjudication case law will have noticed that there are now a few cases where adjudicators have been held to have breached the rules of natural justice, or tripped-up in the exercise of their jurisdiction, because they have not considered a party’s defence or part of it. I’m thinking of cases like Quartzelec Ltd v Honeywell Control Systems, Thermal Energy v Lentjes and Pilon v Bryer.
The issue has recently come before the Scottish Court of Session. Continue reading
The first half of 2010 has seen a number of important decisions affecting construction and engineering practitioners. Continue reading
Adjudication practitioners sat up and took notice of one judgment earlier this year: Edwards-Stuart J’s decision in Yuanda (UK) v WW Gear. (He held that a Tolent clause in the parties’ contract fettered a party’s right to refer a dispute to adjudication “at any time“, which conflicted with section 108 of the Construction Act 1996.) Continue reading
Freddie Mercury from Queen:
“And we have no such thing as a budget anymore. Our manager freaks when we show him the bill. We’re lavish to the bone.”
This month saw the government deliver its emergency budget. If only the country’s economics were as straightforward as being a rock star once was. Continue reading
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
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.
Sustainability is here to stay, but have the industry’s standard form contracts caught up? Should they be leading the charge? Are they just hanging on the coat tails of government regulation?
When I first read the Court of Appeal’s decision in Kookmin Bank v Rainy Sky SA, I couldn’t believe it. Surely I had misunderstood the facts? So I read it again, and everything was as I had thought. Was I missing something?
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