The court also found there were no sufficient grounds for granting a stay.
Comment
It is commonplace for adjudicators to say they have read all the submissions and considered everything and there is no harm in doing so. But it is not sufficient – see AGB Scotland v Darren McDermott 9
where Lord Sandison said a general assertion could not be relied on. There must be some effort to
address the lines of defence advanced and to explain the basis upon which they were accepted or
rejected, failing which the decision would be unenforceable.
Stay of execution pending true value adjudication
Alun Griffiths (Contractors) Ltd v Carmarthenshire County Council [2023] EWHC 2269 (TCC) judgement 14 September 2023
The defendant Council applied to stay execution of the judgment granted in favour of the claimant contractor AG for £3,316,487.55 to enforce an adjudicator’s award. The Council disputed that the adjudication award reflected the true state of the parties’ account.
The dispute arose from civil engineering and construction works carried out by the claimant AG for the
Council. It was accepted that AG was entitled to summary judgment, but the Council asked for a stay
pending the outcome of a true value adjudication (TVA) on the grounds that AG had been insolvent,
and that the parent company guarantee it had provided was inadequate to safeguard its position. The
most recent accounts showed it to be cashflow insolvent. The claimant offered a time-limited guarantee
from its parent company, which did not itself trade but held over £1.5bn in assets through a large
network of subsidiaries.
There was an issue as to adequacy of the guarantee and the question as to whether it was inexpedient to enforce the adjudication award. The court decided that there was no merit in the Council’s application to stay execution. AG’s parent company had a substantial positive cash position and there was no evidence that it would not continue to support AG’s own cash position should the Council succeed in its TVA.
Stay of Execution – Until other disputes resolved J&B Hopkins v A&V Building Solution Limited [2023] EWHC 2475 (TCC)
9 [2023] CSOH 31, 17 May 2023
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