James Bowling & Daniel Goodkin right the wrongs in Jim Ennis
Hard cases make bad law. Jim Ennis Construction v Premier Asphalt Ltd [2009] EWHC 1906, [2009] All ER (D) 29 (Aug) demonstrates that. Here, the court reached the surprising conclusion that a losing party to an adjudication under the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (the 1996 Act) had six years from the date of payment against an adjudicator’s decision to claim its money back, irrespective of the fact that the underlying cause of action had become statute-barred in the meantime. This article explains why that conclusion was wrong (although the judge was right to hold that the claimant was entitled to seek to recover its money).
The facts
The defendant was the claimant’s sub-contractor. On 17 December 2002, the defendant made a final application for payment. The claimant refused to pay, deducting cross-claims. Nearly six years later, on 15 September 2008, the defendant referred those deductions to adjudication. That was within the six-year limitation period for a claim by the defendant for non-payment of the final account, but outside
