Practical Law

Slowly but surely the TCC is working its way through the Construction Act 1996’s payment provisions and providing clarity where there may have been ambiguity. It reminds me of that phrase:

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

This time it was Carr J and the main issue was whether a contractor’s interim application for payment was valid. The case was Jawaby Property Investment Ltd v The Interiors Group Ltd and it also concerned money held in an escrow account and whether it could (and should) be released to a contractor to enable it to pay its sub-contractors.  Continue reading →

It’s funny how the construction world can throw up cases with unexpected outcomes. For example, I recently commented on my surprise at Coulson J’s judgment in Deluxe v Beck Interiors. I was also similarly surprised by Edwards-Stuart J’s judgment in Manor Asset v Demolition Services, which was handed down just three days later. There the court found that there was an implied term in the parties’ building contract that allowed their bespoke payment provisions to comply with the Construction Act 1996. One might have thought that, when faced with non-compliant payment provisions, the relevant parts of the Scheme for Construction Contracts 1998 would be implied, but not so. Instead, we got an implied term that the parties had agreed the prescribed period for giving a pay less notice was to be reduced to nil.

There is certainly debate raging over whether the court got it right by implying such a term, whether the Scheme should have been imported “lock, stock and barrel” instead, or whether the employer “consciously chose to forgo his right to give a pay less notice”. Whatever your views on which argument is correct (or have your own alternative theory), there are other aspects of the judgment that are also worth a brief look. Continue reading →

These days, adjudicators don’t always get named in TCC judgments. It seems to depend on who the judge is, what the matters in dispute are and how well the adjudicator performed. That said, Coulson J is one judge who seems to like naming the adjudicator and the keen-eyed among you will have noticed that Matt was name-checked in two of his most recent judgments. Therefore, I will be looking at those cases.

This week it is the turn of  AMD Environmental Ltd v Cumberland Construction Company Ltd (I’ll leave Penten Group Ltd v Spartafield Ltd for another time). Continue reading →