ADJUDICATION, JURISDICTION, BIAS AND THE NEED FOR A SUFFICIENTLY REASONED DECISION

In Balfour Beatty Engineering Services (HY) Ltd v Shepherd Construction Ltd [2009] EWHC 2218 (TCC), [2009] All ER (D) 125 (Oct) Mr Justice Akenhead dismissed various challenges to the decision of an adjudicator and held that the decision was enforceable. He rejected the submission that the adjudicator lacked jurisdiction to decide the issues that he had decided, that the adjudicator was guilty of bias (whether that bias was actual or apparent) and that the adjudicator had failed to give a sufficiently reasoned decision. In relation to the latter submission Akenhead J helpfully set out a number of conclusions which he derived from the case law, albeit that the standard which he required of adjudicators in terms of the clarity of their reasoning may be said to be rather low.

The facts

The defendant, Shepherd Construction Ltd (hereafter ‘SCL’), employed the claimant, Balfour Beatty Engineering Services (HY) Ltd, as a subcontractor to carry out mechanical and electrical work on a construction project at a hospital in Hull. In the present proceedings the claimant sought to enforce the decision of an adjudicator in what was the second adjudication between the parties arising out of this construction project. The adjudicator had decided that SCL should pay to the claimant over £1.4m. SCL resisted enforcement on grounds that related to the jurisdiction of the adjudicator and on the ground that it alleged that the adjudicator had failed to comply with the rules of natural justice.