This is news carried across from my old website:

7th November 2013
Article in Australian Construction Law Newsletter

My article Three Early Security of Payment Cases in South Australia has been published in the September/October edition of ACLN, which has just come out.

It will shortly need updating, since the Full Court gave leave to Romaldi to appeal to the Full Court, has heard argument, and is due to deliver judgment. I will report the result as soon as it is available.

16th October 2013
South Australian Adjudication Statistics

The 1 July 2012 to 30 June 2013 adjudication ststistics for South Australia have just been
released. They are as follows:

26th September 2013
Society of Construction Law Event in Adelaide on 23rd October 2013

SoCLA will be hosting a discussion on “Costing construction projects: key issues from an industry and legal perspective” at the offices of Minter Ellison at 25 Grenfell Street, Adelaide at 5.00 pm on  23rd October 2013. I will be speaking, along with Tony Brewster from WT Partnership.

Some people think that anything involving quantity surveyors must be dead dull, but they are wrong.  It would be quite wrong to put out a “spoiler”, but if you are in this field and do not know anything about how BIM will affect costing, you should come along.  If you are in this field and do not know anything at all about BIM, you should come along (in the meantime, having in mind that BIM is to CAD what AUSTLII is to your law school notes. And if you don’t know what both CAD and AUSTLII are, you are probably not a construction lawyer at all, and should come along  in order to meet some).

Here is the flyer (click on it for full size):

That event is just a day or so after the Full Court is due to hear an appeal in Romaldi v AIL. If there is news, we will try to give an update.

23rd September 2013
Society of Construction Law Conference

SoCLA has put up some photographs from its annual conference in Sydney this year.

Left to right: Basil Georgiou of Jackson McDonald, Perth, Justice Robert McDougall from the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Robert Fenwick Elliott.

Click the photo for the whole set.

30th July 2013
Kennett v Janssen

The South Australian Supreme Court has given summary judgment declaring void a purported determination of an adjudicator, Adrian Ashman, appointed by Adjudicate Today, on the ground that Mr Ashman was not a person eligible to be an adjudicator pursuant to the SoP Regulations. Mr Ashman’s statement suggested that, whilst not a  member of IAMA, he was eligible to be an associate member, but Justice Blue found otherwise by reference to the IAMA constitution, saying:

A similar consideration applied to the requirement for election.

In the proceedings, there were other grounds of challenge, but the application for summary judgment was made on this ground alone, in order that the court might declare the determination void without potentially straying into issues germane to the underlying dispute.

The decision means that both of the adjudication challenges so far brought in the South Australian Supreme Court have led to the determinations being overturned, see also Built Environs v Tali (both are noted on Decided Cases)

13th July 2013
Adelaide Interior Lining v Romaldi

The first instance decision in ROMALDI CONSTRUCTIONS PTY LTD v ADELAIDE INTERIOR LININGS PTY LTD [2013] SADC 39 (3 April 2013) came as surprise to many of us: the District Court of South Australia restrained the enforcement of an adjudicator’s decision notwithstanding that the decision itself was not impugned, on the ground that the claimant might not be able to pay the money back at the end of a  full fight. That decision, if  it had stood, would have unwound the essential purpose of the BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY SECURITY OF PAYMENT ACT 2009.

However, the decision has now been reversed on appeal by Anderson J; see ADELAIDE INTERIOR LININGS PTY LTD v ROMALDI CONSTRUCTIONS PTY LTD [2013] SASC 110 (5 July 2013)