All articles by Tony Bingham – Page 15
-
CommentThe clues are all there …
Under the DTI review, payers and payees call in the adjudicator if they can't agree how much is due. The referee must rule on the spat, but shouldn't play detective
-
-
CommentA painful case
Sometimes contractors just get fed up with a job, and it grinds to a halt. When something like that happened to Birse, it got sacked. Then it got the bill …
-
CommentYou’re mistaken, m’lud
In Carillion vs Devonport, the Court of Appeal was right to back an adjudicator’s decision to award interest, but in doing so it made some unhelpful comments …
-
CommentPeople who care
A faulty load transfer platform caused a block of luxury flats to sink. The consulting engineer didn’t design the platform, but could it be liable for the problem?
-
CommentI’m feeling a bit fuzzy
Fuzzy-edge disease’ strikes when a contract does not clearly allocate design responsibilities. Emcor Drake & Scull tried to inoculate itself, but it got caught out
-
CommentBehind the veil
This is a murky tale of one man, three companies and a lot of fly-tipping. It also illustrates how the courts will look at who truly controls a company …
-
CommentCold comfort
This week’s energy special continues in the legal pages, and to kick us off we have a severe weather warning from Building’s answer to Michael Fish
-
Comment
On being naughty
Is this a cautionary tale of an innocent subcontractor hounded by the big bad tax man? Or was its ‘minor and technical’ infraction actually something more?
-
CommentA family affair
The man who defrauded the Millennium Dome of £4m has just been sent down, but suspicions were first aroused in a little-known adjudication case back in 2001
-
CommentWar of the words
A letter of intent is meant to be a stop-gap before the contract kicks in, but all too often it sparks a dispute – in this case over the words ‘loss and expense’
-
CommentA happy compromise
A trial before a judge or arbitrator is one thing; negotiations facilitated by a mediator is a horse of a different colour. So what would happen if we crossed them?
-
CommentAll too human
Arbitrators, adjudicators, even judges, all have unconscious bias. You can’t change that – but you can make sure that you don’t help them to direct it against you
-
CommentOffensive manoeuvres
A decision reached by an adjudicator can be overturned in court, one reached by an arbitrator cannot – unless the claimant establishes that he is incompetent
-
CommentA wardance
The ordinary way that contracts are entered into provides a natural breeding ground for disputes, as vividly demonstrated by this recent Appeal Court case
-
CommentIt’s … Robo-adjudicator!
Dispute resolution is no job for have-a-go amateurs. So five chartered bodies have teamed up to turn adjudicators into contract law enforcement machines
-
CommentFractal law
As with the coastline of England or the Mandlebrot Set, the closer you look at standard forms of contract, the more complexity you find. Take this example …
-
CommentA six-year stretch
By the time that Henry Boot vs Alstom reached the Court of Appeal, £60m was hanging on the definition of when the clock starts ticking on the six-year rule …
-
CommentGo ask Alice
How can you miss a deadline if you’re a day early? Very easily, if you’re in the Wonderland world of the law, where words mean just what the contract says they do
-
CommentWhose side are you on?
It’s taken 20 years to decide whether the project manager under the NEC contract has a duty to be unbiased. Now, thanks to Mr Justice Jackson, we know