HT-2025-LDS-000008 - [2025] EWHC 2224 (TCC)

This judgment follows the hearing of the Claimant’s application for summary judgment to enforce the decision of the adjudicator Mr Wood dated 18 December 2024 to award the Claimant a payment of £132,884.72.

The Defendant seeks to defend these enforcement proceedings relying on a lack of jurisdiction argument. It argues thatthat there “is a strong prima facie case that the Claimant deliberately or recklessly made a false statement in the process of applying to the Adjudicator Nominating Body in order to seek an advantage, meaning that the application is invalid and the appointment a nullity, such that the Adjudicator did not have jurisdiction”(relying on the principle in the case of Eurocom v Siemens [2014] EWHC 3710). If the lack of jurisdiction argument fails, the Defendant also seeks a stay on the basis of the Claimant’s inability to re-pay any sum enforced by way of summary judgment.

I had the benefit of hearing from Mr Beaumont, Counsel, for the Claimant and Ms Dynes, Counsel, for the Defendant. Both counsel had provided helpful skeleton arguments before the hearing. Miss Dynes had also provided a chronology and a document comparing changes which she asserted had been made in respect of facts asserted by the Claimant in various witness statements. That document also posed a number of questions which Miss Dynes asserted surprisingly remained unanswered by the Claimant’s evidence.