Articles

Qatar is now the richest country in the world by GDP per capita; which stands at a staggering USD102,000.00.

Some of you will be aware of the judgment of the Court of Appeal published last November. This case, Andrew Mitchell MP v News Group Newspapers [2013] EWCA Civ 1537, concerned the failure the solicitors of Andrew Mitchell to file a costs budget on time.

I became aware of a complaint recently regarding alleged bias against an adjudicator. One school of thought is that such complaints should be left for the Court to deal with.

This is my sixth article on the basics of adjudication for lay users. In this article, I am going to try to demystify issues surrounding Meetings, Site visits and Witnesses.

The entire rationale for adjudication is that it is intended to produce a “rough and ready” brand of justice for the construction industry. In theory, at least, an adjudicator cannot finally determine the rights of the parties but is instead intended to provide a decision by which disputes can be determined on a provisional interim basis.

It sometimes seems to me that we are in the Mad Hatter’s World (or, maybe even worse, the Dormouse’s World!) when we deal with the payment provisions of the new ‘Construction Act’ (i.e. the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act, 2009). Why has something that should be so simple become so complex?

The question of whether a party can be prevented from referring a dispute to adjudication is one that the courts have had to deal with only infrequently.

The theme for this quarter’s edition of the newsletter – by accident rather than design – is ‘underhand tactics’ - whether through the vexatious use of multiple adjudications, breaches of natural justice, bias or just plain corruption.