Charles Pimlott acted for the successful claimant in adjudication enforcement claim
This case represents the latest word from the TCC in a long line of cases about serial adjudication. The issue was whether an adjudicator’s second decision requiring the defendant to pay a sum of money contradicted a binding first adjudication decision by exceeding a £136,500 payment cap. Mrs Justice Nerys Jefford held that it did not, as that cap related to works in the claimant’s fee proposal, which the second decision was not dealing with.
In the course of giving judgment the learned judge said that, by analogy to the “same or substantially the same dispute” cases (notably Brown v Complete Building Solutions [2016] EWCA Civ 1 and Harding v Paice [2015] EWCA) the starting point was the adjudicator’s view of what the previous adjudicator had decided and it is important that the court gives due respect to the adjudicator’s decision on this matter. She also said that (had it been necessary) she would have accepted the claimant’s alternative submission that in this case the adjudicator had jurisdiction to decide what he had previously decided and that decision was binding in itself.
Charles Pimlott appeared for Waldeck Associates Ltd, instructed by Hodgkinsons Solicitors.
