In July 2014, the Defendant engaged the Claimant to carry out electrical works to the West Stand and executive boxes at Twickenham Stadium. The Claimant issued invoices for the works carried out, but the Defendant failed to pay the sums claimed and also failed to serve pay less notices. The Claimant therefore launched two adjudications, and the adjudicator’s decisions ordered the Defendant to pay over £360,000 to the Claimant. The Claimant subsequently applied for summary judgment to enforce the two adjudicator’s decisions.

In resisting enforcement of the adjudicator’s decisions, the Defendant made a number of jurisdictional and natural justice arguments, as follows:

• that a dispute had not crystallised;
• relying on Eurocom v Siemens, that the sentence “It is strongly preferred that any of the adjudicators in the attached list are not appointed”, which was included by CSK in its application for appointment of an adjudicator, constituted a fraudulent misrepresentation, and that therefore the adjudicator’s appointments were invalid; and
• that the adjudicator’s timetable was too quick and put the Defendant’s resources under too great a strain.

By way of response to the above, the Claimant contended that the Defendant had waived its rights to rely on the above grounds for challenge, given that it had not raised them at the outset of the adjudication and had confirmed the validity of the adjudication decisions by paying the adjudicator’s fees and applying under the slip rules for correction of both of the decisions.

In enforcing the two adjudication decisions and rejecting all of the above grounds on which the Defendant resisted enforcement, Coulson J (after considering the recent judgment in Eurocom Ltd v Siemens Plc) found that the sentence “It is strongly preferred that any of the adjudicators in the attached list are not appointed” did not invalidate the adjudicator’s appointment because it had been included in error and no such list was actually attached. In any event, Coulson J agreed with the Claimant’s contention that the Defendant had waived its right to challenge the adjudication decisions by way of jurisdiction and/or natural justice.

In light of the court’s findings, the Defendant applied for a stay of execution on the basis of the Claimant’s probable inability to repay the judgment sum following a substantive trial of the dispute. In applying the Wimbledon Construction Company 2000 Ltd v Vago principles, Coulson J refused to grant such a stay.