Quadro Services Ltd v Creagh Concrete Products 2021
This is a simple case study on Quadro Services Ltd v Creagh Concrete Products 2021.
Details of Quadro Services Ltd v Creagh Concrete Products 2021.
Creagh Concrete Products is a business specialising in the provision of precast concrete frames, floor,
stairs and so on.
This concrete company verbally agreed to contract Quadro Services to install some of their concrete products on one project.
Quadro carried out the works on this one contract and duly raised three separate cumulative invoices which were never paid.
Quadro referred the dispute to adjudication.
What did the defending party say?
Creagh hired a solicitor and went technical.
They basically said, ‘you have referred three separate issues to adjudication (the three invoices) so therefore this adjudication is not
valid’.
Adjudication should only be for one issue.
What did the adjudicator say?
Adjudicator ruled that the three payment issues were all the same one issue so adjudication was
valid.
Quadro was entitled to payment of all three invoices which total circa £40k plus interest plus adjudicators cost (say £5-10k)
The losing party did not pay up !
That’s right! Cheeky b**gers! No respect for the adjudication process.
So the referring party had to go to the Construction and Technology court to get paid. The court ruled in their favour. This meant the Client essentially had to pay or face a winding up order. This is a fast tracked process so you are not
waiting around for weeks and months.
Key learning points in Quadro Services Ltd v Creagh concrete products 2021
In Quadro Services Ltd v Creagh Concrete Products 2021 there was no written contract, just a verbal contract, it all counts, its still a valid contract.
There was no written contract so this meant that adjudication was possible ‘by scheme’ relying on the statutory right of the parties to adjudication (it
doesn’t have to be in the contract).
The Client did not issue payment notices or payless notices so had no argument about not paying.
The defending party did not participate in the adjudication. They lost the adjudication but then did not pay. They were then taken to court (the Technology and Construction Court) and lost again. If they did not pay that
court order then the company could be technically wound up.
Adjudication is private unless you don’t pay up and then the case gets into the public courts and into case studies like this.
Nerdy Point
The case is interesting in the canon of legal cases because it reinforces that you can take more than one dispute to adjudication provided they fall under
the same umbrella of disputes.
It is established or ‘settled’ law if a referring party refers more than one dispute to adjudication the adjudicator has no jurisdiction to adjudicate unless he can
get both parties to agree to sort out several issues in one single adjudication.
In this case the referring party (Quadro) said there three outstanding invoices.
The responding party said that as each of those invoices were a separate issue
adjudication should not apply.
They said the referring party would have to refer each payment breach to adjudication separately. They were wrong.