China State Construction Engineering Sdn Bhd

On the court record

A construction company litigating the limits of pre-decision court intervention in CIPAA adjudication, allegations of adjudication in furtherance of fraud, and judicial management of a severely insolvent counterparty under section 405 of the Companies Act 2016.

China State Construction Engineering Sdn Bhd is a construction company, and it appears in the corpus in construction-payment adjudication, judicial management and pleadings disputes, in which the recurring themes are the limits of court intervention in adjudication and the protection of an insolvent contractor. It appears as applicant, intervener, defendant and respondent in the High Court.

Adjudication under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 is central, and it raises the question of when a court may step in before an adjudication has run its course. In one matter the company sought pre-decision judicial intervention, the question being whether the High Court should intervene in ongoing adjudication proceedings before a decision is rendered, and whether the high threshold of a "plainly and obviously clear" absence of jurisdiction had been met. In an earlier matter the question was whether the adjudication proceedings had been initiated in furtherance of a fraud, so as to be oppressive and an abuse of process, and whether the resulting decision was likely to be set aside under section 15(a) or stayed under section 16(1)(b) of CIPAA.

The insolvency and pleadings strands complete the picture. The company was involved, as an intervener, in an application for a judicial management order under section 405 of the Companies Act 2016 in respect of a severely insolvent company that lacked the funding to complete its projects, engaging the pre-conditions for such an order, the likelihood that the statutory objectives would be achieved, and the standing of an unsecured creditor to intervene. In a separate matter the company sought to amend its statement of claim substantially, the proposed amendment increasing the pleading from 92 to 239 paragraphs. The company's footprint maps the life of a construction contractor in dispute — resisting or challenging adjudication, seeking or opposing the rescue of an insolvent counterparty through judicial management, and reshaping its pleaded case as the litigation develops.