COREBUILD LTD v CLEAVER AND ANOTHER

[2019] EWHC 2170 (TCC), Technology and Construction Court, Mr Adam Constable QC sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, 7 August 2019

Adjudication – Breach of principles of natural justice – Stay of execution – Summary judgment – Enforcement

The claimant applied for summary judgment in order to enforce the decision of an adjudicator. The defendants sought to resist summary judgment on four grounds. The claim arose out of a project on a residential property in London. A letter was sent by the contract administrator to the claimant in which it was stated that he considered the claimant to be in default as a result of its failure to proceed regularly and diligently with the works and that if the claimant were to continue with that default for 14 days from the date of the letter, the defendants may exercise their right to terminate the contract between the parties. The defendants terminated the contract on the expiry of the notice period on the ground that the previously notified default had continued over the notice period. The claimant referred the resultant dispute between the parties to adjudication and the adjudicator decided that the defendants had repudiated the contract in seeking to terminate the contract in the way in which they had done and he ordered the defendants to pay to the claimants £80,023.82.