ADJUDICATION AND NATURAL JUSTICE

Balfour Beatty Construction Ltd v The Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Lambeth [2002] BLR 288

In Balfour Beatty Construction Ltd v The Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Lambeth [2002] BLR 288 His Honour Judge Humphrey LLoyd QC held that an adjudicator who wishes to adopt a method of analysis which has neither been agreed by the parties nor been put forward by either of them ought to inform the parties and obtain their views before producing his decision. A failure to do so may result in a court concluding that the decision is unenforceable as a result of the adjudicator’s failure to comply with the requirements of natural justice. In particular, Judge LLoyd stated that an adjudicator who constructs (or reconstructs) a party’s case for it without confronting the other party with it commits such a potentially serious breach of the requirement of impartially or, if one prefers, fairness that it renders his decision invalid.