‘DISPUTE OR DIFFERENCE’ AND CORPORATE PERSONALITY

Stirling (trading as M & S Contracts) v Westminster Properties Scotland Ltd [2007] CSOH 117, 9 July 2007

In Stirling (trading as M & S Contracts) v Westminster Properties Scotland Ltd [2007] CSOH 117, 9 July 2007, Lord Drummond Young, sitting in the Outer House of the Court of Session, held that a dispute or difference existed between the parties prior to the service of the notice of adjudication. In so doing he held that the principles set out in Amec Civil Engineering Ltd v Secretary of State for Transport [2005] BLR 227 (on which see our May 2005 issue, pp. 1–6) were wholly consistent with Scots law and should be followed in Scotland, at least in relation to the standard forms of construction contract. He also held that the fact that the prior correspondence had been conducted in the name of the company of which the pursuer was the sole director, rather than in the name of the pursuer himself, was not fatal to the existence of a dispute between the pursuer and the defenders because the company, in conducting the correspondence, had been acting as an ad hoc agent of the pursuer.