SAMSUNG C&T CORPORATION UEM CONSTRUCTION JV Sdn Bhd

On the court record

A construction joint-venture company litigating the set-aside, stay and enforcement of CIPAA adjudication decisions, and the finality of an arbitral award, at the interface of adjudication and arbitration.

Samsung C&T Corporation UEM Construction JV Sdn Bhd is a construction joint-venture company, and it appears in the corpus in construction-payment and arbitration litigation, in the recurring posture of a party seeking to set aside or stay adjudication decisions and to hold enforcement pending arbitration. It appears as applicant and respondent in the High Court.

Adjudication under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 is central. In one matter the company applied under sections 15(b) and (d) of CIPAA to set aside an adjudication decision obtained against it by a counterparty. In a connected set of originating summonses, the company applied to set aside an adjudication decision given in favour of another counterparty under sections 15(a), (b) and (d), applied under section 16(1)(b) to stay those proceedings — including any winding-up proceedings and payments under section 30 of CIPAA — until the final disposition of the matter in arbitration, while the counterparty applied under section 28 to enforce the decision. That constellation of set-aside, stay and enforce applications, with a stay sought to preserve the position pending arbitration, is the characteristic battleground of a large contested construction payment.

The arbitration dimension also generated a discrete question about the finality of an award. In one matter the court considered whether a Final Award constituted a "final award" within the meaning of certain injunction orders, and whether the reservation of the arbitration costs to a further award derogated from the finality of the award on the substantive issues. That question — whether an award that resolves the merits but leaves costs to be dealt with later is nonetheless "final" — matters because finality can trigger contractual and procedural consequences. The company's footprint places it squarely within the interface between statutory adjudication and arbitration in a substantial construction dispute, deploying stays and set-aside applications to keep the provisional payment regime from outrunning the final resolution of the parties' rights.