Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Adjudication: no apparent bias from refusing disclosure; payment of adjudicator’s fees waived challenge; indemnity costs for unmeritorious defence – Essential Living v Conneely (TCC, England and Wales)

Published on: 30 October 2024

Published by a LexisNexis Construction expert

Legal News

Article summary

Essential Living (Greenwich) Ltd v Conneely Facades Ltd [2024] EWHC 2629 (TCC)

What are the practical implications of this case?

This decision underscores that the court will entertain natural justice attacks on adjudicators’ awards only in the starkest circumstances, and will discount trivial objections to the adjudicator’s method. Courts tend to disregard minor or immaterial criticisms of the adjudicator’s approach, looking only for substantive unfairness in most cases. In particular, the ruling indicates a court is slow to find that an adjudicator pre‑judged the dispute (and so was biased) unless they settled on a definitive view of a material point at an early juncture and deprived the parties of a fair chance to advance their arguments. The case also serves as a caution that a party can forfeit its ability to contest an adjudicator’s determination through its behaviour after the process concludes. Notably, where a party pays the adjudicator’s fees without reserving its position on the award’s validity, the court may treat that step as an election to regard the decision as effective—even if the paying party had a tenable enforceability challenge it had ventilated during the adjudication.

What was the background?

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