With Jeremy Coggins (centre) and Phil Evans (right)
I was pleased the other day to be at the book launch of Understanding Construction Law, by inter alia Dr Jeremy Coggins and Professor Phil Evans.
With the benefit of only a brief look, it looks very good; I will look forward to spending some more time with it in due course.
My own progress with Extra-Contractual Recoveries has been Continue reading
I have a couple of talks this coming week, in Adelaide on Wednesday and then in Brisbane on Thursday.
The Wednesday talk is on indemnities, with the snappy title of Drafting Indemnities: Getting the Details Right. The session is part of a day run by Legalwise seminars – I suspect most people will be there because of the need to earn CPD points.
More fun will be the session in 
Brisbane on Thurday, where I will be joining my colleagues from my London chambers – Keating Chambers – Marcus Taverner, Adam Constable and Jennie Wild at a SoCLA event, debating the impact of Cavendish v Makdessi and other recent cases. It will take the form of a sort of debate, Jennie setting the scene, then Adam suggesting that not much has changed, and then me suggesting that the revival and expansion of the doctrine of relief from forfeiture might well be really quite a big change. I have Continue reading
My eye was caught today by the decision just a month ago of the Privy Council in NH International (Caribbean) Limited v National Insurance Property Development Company Limited (Trinidad and Tobago)[1] . The case arose out of Scarborough Hospital in Tobago.
The first part of the Appeal was about the provision at clause 2.4 of the Red Book whereby Employers can be required to provide reasonable evidence of financial arrangements having been made and maintained which will enable it to pay the contract price. In this case, the finding was that the Employer had not done that. And so the Contractor was entitled to determine. The case is of course important to FIDIC projects; probably, FIDIC contractors do not make as much use of this clause as they could do if they wanted to.
Rather, my attention was attracted by the second part of the Appeal, which was to do with the notice provision at clause 2.5 of the Red Book, dealing with claims brought by the Employer against the Contractor. The clause required the Employer to give notice and particulars to the Contractor as soon as practicable, specifying Continue reading
I would have posted this extract from my forthcoming book on LinkedIn. But it is too long. So here it is. The formatting has come across a bit wonky, but you might get the drift: Continue reading
I have been working on my book Extra-Contractual Remedies, and exploring the thought that The Product Star is a case that has been rather overlooked in construction law. There is a passing reference in the BLR commentary on Balfour Beatty v Docklands Light Railway, but that is about it.
Given the endorsement of the principle by the Supreme Court a few weeks ago, I wonder if might be time for more attention. I know it is a shipping case. But even so…
My draft is currently thus, on this topic:
1 There are a number of commercial cases which show that a party with a contractual right to exercise a discretionary power may be subject to an implied obligation to exercise that power rationally. This line of authority stems from this passage in The Product Star Continue reading
I am currently working a new book, Extra-Contractual Recoveries for Construction & Engineering Work. The idea is simple: a contractor has done work, but the contract does not contain any provision which provides for him to get paid what he might commercially expect. He can read the contract once, twice or twenty times, but that will not inform him at all as to what legal routes might enable him to get paid.
Over the years, I have collected a great deal of money for clients, and much of it has been via extra-contractual routes: quantum meruit, misrepresentation, damages claims and the like. It seemed a good idea to write down what I know, but it is taking a fair bit of time. The book is inevitably international, since the common law principles come from a variety of jurisdictions. But I am trying to restrict the discussion of legislative routes to the UK and Australia, being the places I am admitted in.
There was a time when I was young that I thought I might end up in the Army. But as time has gone by, Continue reading