Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Object lessons in oral residential construction contracts: undisclosed principals, instructions v drawings, and repudiation in Kang v Pattar (TCC, England and Wales)

Published on: 13 May 2021

Published by a LexisNexis Construction expert

Legal News

Article summary

Kang and another v Pattar [2021] EWHC 1101 (TCC)

What are the practical implications of this case?

The outcome was fact-specific, resting largely on the judge’s consistent preference for the defendant’s testimony and the ensuing conclusions about what had been agreed. Even so, the decision offers clear warnings for parties who arrange and run building contracts by word of mouth and only later commit their arrangements to paper: These observations are directed at parties who agree and perform their building contracts orally, and only afterwards put those contracts into writing.

where instructions are routinely delivered to a contractor orally and clash with later written terms or design drawings, the contractor is not automatically in breach for following spoken directions rather than subsequent contract documents. If the later documents are meant to oblige the contractor to remove and remake existing work that conflicts with them, the parties must state that expressly
whether disputed provisions of an oral building agreement were made will be assessed against practical common sense in construction. For instance, here the claimants said the defendant agreed to move the drainage runs beneath the property. Yet the claimants poured a concrete floor slab over the ground floor before the...

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