BEUMER GROUP UK LTD v VINCI CONSTRUCTION UK LTD

[2016] EWHC 2283 (TCC), Technology and Construction Court, Fraser J, 13 September 2016

Adjudication - Principles of natural justice - Adjudicator's failure to disclose contemporaneous adjudication involving one of the parties to the adjudication

An adjudicator was appointed to resolve a dispute between the claimant and the defendant. He had also been appointed as an adjudicator in a contemporaneous dispute between the claimant and one of its sub-contractors on the same project. Both the adjudicator and the claimant failed to inform the defendant of this fact. This failure to disclose the adjudicator's role was compounded by the fact that the claimant in the other adjudication had adopted a position which was found by Fraser J to be factually inconsistent with the position it had adopted in the adjudication to which the defendant was a party. Fraser J took 'a very dim view' of the propriety of this type of behaviour. He seriously doubted whether 'a director of a company could sign a statement of truth in two sets of legal proceedings in such circumstances saying such quite different things on the same point'.