Construction Newsletter: February 2018

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Dear Reader,

Welcome to the adjudication-themed February 2018 Issue of the Hardwicke Construction and Engineering Newsletter!

This issue is dedicated to the relaunch of our highly successful fixed fee adjudication scheme.

It has been an exciting past few months for Hardwicke. We were delighted to win the prestigious ‘Chambers of the Year’ award at the Legal Week British Legal Awards. On an individual level, Nigel Jones KC received special recognition at the Modern Law Awards earlier this month where he was ‘highly commended’ in the Barrister of the Year category. This follows our success in being named the 2017 Legal 500 ‘Construction and Engineering Chambers of the Year’.

With both Legal 500 and Chambers UK Bar Directories now published, we are pleased to report that, once again, the Hardwicke Construction Team has done exceptionally well. Hardwicke remains a leading construction set in both directories with the majority of the Construction Team’s senior members recommended in that area.

In Legal 500, we have Catherine Piercy KC newly recommended in the related area of professional negligence (an area in which Hardwicke is also recommended as a leading set). In addition Chambers UK has a section for Property Damage in which Catherine was also newly recommended.

Over the coming year, there are a number of exciting events to draw your attention to. Members of the Hardwicke Construction Team will be attending MIPIM 2018 and we are hosting a Hardwicke party on Tuesday 13 March. If you would like to join us, please let us know!

Starting in March and continuing throughout the spring/summer, we will be kicking off a new J2J Construction seminar series. This was a tremendous success in 2017 and we look forward to welcoming you to a new set of talks this year: full details are here.

Also in March, we are looking forward to the launch party at JLT’s offices on 8 March of Hardwicke’s new practitioners’ text on Construction Professional Indemnity Insurance. This will be followed in April by the international launch of the Construction Professional Idemnity Insurance book, by Paul Reed KC, in Dubai. Please let us know if you are interested in attending either event.

Thank you for reading,

Michael Tetstall

Hardwicke Fixed Fee Adjudication and Enforcement Scheme

We are excited to relaunch our pioneering fixed fee scheme at the start of 2018. Through the scheme, clients can instruct counsel at a fixed price for adjudications and for the court enforcement of adjudication decisions up to a value of £250,000. We have had excellent feedback regarding the competitive rates we offer and the certainty that comes from the fixed price. The Practice Team here at Hardwicke would be glad to discuss any aspect of the scheme or alternatively full details are available online here.

Comment - Bring it on... bring it all on - Catherine Piercy

Bring it on… bring it all on! The risky strategy of leaving over arguments for another day in serial adjudications.

Referring parties in adjudications have long known that the courts will not tolerate piecemeal arguments across serial adjudications, but it was not clear how this affected the responding party. Much-needed clarity has been brought to the issue by the decision in Mailbox (Birmingham) Limited v Galliford Try Building Limited [2017] EWHC 1405 (TCC), although the outcome for responding parties may not be what they had hoped, as Catherine Piercy explains.
Read Catherine’s full article here.

Comment - Costs under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998... - Helena White

Costs under the late payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 following Enviroflow Management Ltd v Redhill Works (Nottingham) Ltd [2017] EWHC 2159 (TCC): a resolution of temporary finality?

Parties will sometimes try to circumvent the rules on non-recovery of costs in adjudication proceedings, with one such route being based on the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. The decision of O’Farrell J. in Enviroflow v Redhill has resolved this point and reinforced the status quo, as explored by Helena White.

Read Helena’s full article here.

Case note - The Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust v ATOS IT Services UK Limited [2017] EWHC 2197

Case note: The Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust v ATOS IT Services UK Limited [2017] EWHC 2197

Where is the line between lost profits and lost expenditure? Do awards for wasted expenditure reflect a loss of profits the claimant could have earned by deploying its resources differently, or is it part of the loss of the ‘benefit of the contract’? We look at how these points are dealt with in the The Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust v ATOS IT Services UK Limited.

Read the full case report here.