The claimant, John Sisk & Son Ltd, applied to the court to enforce a decision of an adjudicator in which in which it had been awarded a sum in excess of £10 million. The Defendant, Duro Felguera UK Ltd, resisted the application on the grounds that there were breaches of natural justice and/or a wrongful delegation of the adjudicator’s decision making function.

The defendant resisted the application on three grounds. First, that there was a real danger that the adjudicator had approached certain issues with a closed mind. Second, the adjudicator had delegated, or at least he had appeared to have delegated, certain parts of his decision making role to a third party, without notifying the parties or seeking their consent. Third, he purported to rectify or to amend the contract in circumstances where neither party had submitted that it should be rectified and without giving the parties any notice of his intention to take that approach.

Mr Justice Edwards-Stuart enforced the adjudicator’s decision, holding that the adjudicator did not breach the rules of natural justice and that he did not  wrongfully delegate parts of  his decision making role to a third party. The third party attended a meeting but no comment was raised by or on behalf of the defendant about his involvement until over two weeks after the adjudicator had issued his decision and nearly two months after the meeting in question. When queried as to the third party’s role, the adjudicator responded by saying that he had taken a note for him so that the adjudicator “could concentrate on the matter in issue.” Further enquiries of the adjudicator then followed, with the adjudicator describing the inference that the third party was the author of integral parts of his decision as “plainly incorrect”.

The Judge said that he could see no basis for doubting the adjudicator’s statement that he had asked the third party to produce spreadsheets that assembled similar items of work from different areas of the project so that the adjudicator could deal with all similar items in a consistent manner. The Judge said that:

“In my judgment, that exercise is simply one of assembling information in a particular order; it does not involve any decision making (save the very mundane level of deciding which items should be grouped together)”.

The Judge could find “no evidence that any material decision or valuation” was taken by the third party, rather than by the adjudicator and, felt that the documents were entirely consistent with the adjudicator’s explanation that the third party’s role “was that of a data handler and manipulator and a general administrative assistant”.

The defendant’s challenge to the adjudicator’s decision failed, and the claimant was awarded summary judgment.  The practical effect of this case is that if a party suspects that an adjudicator has delegated his decision making function to a third party, it should raise an objection as soon as it becomes aware of the possibility. Further, a breach of natural justice will not arise in circumstances where a third party is appointed to carry out a purely administrative role.