The new Practice Direction on pre-action conduct comes into force today, 6 April 2009.
Construction and engineering disputes will be affected by the new Practice Direction, which will replace the current Practice Direction on Pre-action Protocols. Continue reading
I recently wrote about being an adjudicator at a mock adjudication hosted by Collyer Bristow. The dispute was between a contractor, Q (the referring party) and the employer, L (the responding party). Q claimed L owed it £400,000, which L denied.
This post looks at the allegation of bias, that is: was there a risk of bias because of an alleged relationship between the adjudicator and Mr Jones, an employee of the referring party? (Last time I dealt with the no contract point.) Continue reading
The long-running Wembley litigation battle (Multiplex v Cleveland Bridge) is destined not to go away. As Construction News reported today, the Court of Appeal has given both parties permission to appeal the decision of Mr Justice Jackson, handed down at the end of September last year. (Jackson J had refused both parties’ applications for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal.) Continue reading
The recent case of Furmans Electrical Contractors v Elecref Ltd concerned a construction dispute over only a few thousand pounds. Although it made no headlines, this case raises an interesting question – one which you are best avoiding going to court to answer. Continue reading
It is rare to see an individual (or a couple, as in Shaw v Massey) arguing the residential occupier exclusion (section 106 of the Construction Act 1996) applies to their contract. This is because nowadays all the commonly used standard form contracts contain or incorporate an adjudication clause. Therefore, even if an individual is, strictly speaking, a residential occupier within the meaning of section 106, they will have contractually agreed to adjudicate any dispute that arises. Continue reading
What happens if your construction contract contains adjudication provisions that do not comply with the Construction Act 1996 (Act)? “That’s easy”, you say, “the Scheme for Construction Contracts 1998 (Scheme) applies because section 108(5) of the Act says that if the contract does not comply with section 108(1) to (4), the adjudication provisions of the Scheme apply.”
Here comes the tricky question: does the Scheme substitute the contractual adjudication provisions in whole or only in part? Continue reading
In the House of Commons last night, during the adjournment debate on blacklisting in the construction industry, the Government Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs, Mr Pat McFadden, confirmed that the Consulting Association, run by Ian Kerr, will be prosecuted under the Data Protection Act 1998 for compiling its database of blacklisted individuals. Continue reading
It is funny that Matt should write about the admissibility of a previous adjudicator’s decision in a later adjudication, where the parties were the same, the facts were similar but the project was entirely different.
Recently I have experienced this first-hand, but with a twist. Continue reading
Construction companies are increasingly looking to the public sector, as private sector work dries up. Two pieces of evidence support this view: Continue reading
The TCC’s recent judgment in Thermal Energy Construction Ltd v AE&E Lentjes UK Ltd must have given some adjudicators a bit of a fright. The TCC refused to enforce an adjudicator’s decision despite previous case law (upheld in the Court of Appeal) that an adjudicator’s decision can only be challenged for a failure to give reasons in “extreme circumstances”.
So what made this case so extreme and are there any lessons to be learnt? Continue reading