Specialists International
This Knowledge Check examines High Tech Construction Limited's application to enforce an adjudicator's decision against WLP Trading and Marketing Limited. The court had to decide whether WLP had a real prospect of proving that the JCT contract used as the foundation of the adjudication did not exist, with the result that the adjudicator lacked jurisdiction.
The dispute concerned residential construction works at 162 Willesden Lane, London. The adjudicator awarded High Tech £2,142,623.35 plus interest on a true-value basis. High Tech treated a JCT Design and Build Sub-Contract Agreement as the governing contract and placed its execution in January 2023. WLP contended that the works arose instead under enabling-works arrangements and a £1.25 million reinforced-concrete-frame contract.
The court applied the summary judgment test and the authorities concerning the contractual source of an adjudicator's jurisdiction. It distinguished an error in describing an accepted foundational contract from a dispute about whether the alleged contract existed at all. WLP had a real prospect of succeeding on the latter case at trial, so summary enforcement was refused.
- The adjudicator's award and WLP's grounds for resisting enforcement
- The competing accounts of the January JCT contract
- WLP's enabling-works and reinforced-concrete-frame contract case
- The summary judgment test applied by the court
- The policy of enforcing adjudicators' decisions and its jurisdictional limit
- The adjudicator's ability to investigate, but not finally determine, jurisdiction
- The principles derived from Pegram, Air Design, Viridis and Cubex
- The distinction between contractual misdescription and non-existence
- The court's treatment of the fraud arguments
- The refusal of summary enforcement and the position on a stay