MENTA CONSTRUCTION Sdn Bhd

On the court record

A construction company enforcing CIPAA adjudication decisions from the unpaid party's side, including the section 30 direct-payment route against a principal, and resisting set-aside and stay applications.

Menta Construction Sdn Bhd appears in the corpus in construction-payment litigation under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012, in the posture of an unpaid party enforcing adjudication decisions it has obtained and pursuing direct payment from a principal. It appears as applicant and respondent in the High Court.

The direct-payment mechanism is a distinctive feature. In one matter the company applied under section 30 of CIPAA for direct payment from a principal following an unsatisfied adjudication decision, the issue being whether monies were due or payable by the defendant principal to the contractor at the time the notice for direct payment was issued. Section 30 allows an unpaid party that has secured an adjudication decision to look past the defaulting party to the principal higher up the contractual chain, and its operation depends on whether the principal was itself holding money due to the intermediate party.

The enforcement and set-aside contests follow the familiar CIPAA pattern. In connected originating summonses arising from an adjudication decision the company had obtained against one counterparty, that counterparty applied to set aside and stay the decision while the company applied to enforce it. In a further set of connected summonses arising from a separate adjudication decision the company had obtained against another counterparty, the counterparty again applied to set aside the decision and to stay its enforcement pending the disposal of the challenge, while the company moved to enforce. This repeated set-aside-versus-enforce pairing, across more than one adjudication decision and more than one counterparty, marks the company out as an active claimant in the construction-payment regime — one that repeatedly obtains adjudication decisions and then presses for their enforcement, including through the section 30 direct-payment route, against parties who resist on jurisdictional and other grounds. Its footprint is a clear illustration of CIPAA enforcement from the unpaid party's side.