SLG CONSTRUCTION Sdn Bhd

On the court record

A construction company contesting a CIPAA adjudication decision on natural-justice grounds under section 15(b), against the counterparty's section 28 enforcement and a stay pending a related civil suit.

SLG Construction Sdn Bhd appears in the corpus in construction-payment litigation under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012, in the recurring posture of contesting an adjudication decision on natural-justice grounds while the counterparty seeks enforcement. It appears as respondent and applicant in the High Court.

The central subject is a contested adjudication decision and the scope of the court's supervisory jurisdiction over it. In one matter the challenge was an application to set aside an adjudication decision under section 15(b) of CIPAA on the ground of an alleged denial of natural justice, which required the court to draw the important distinction between procedural fairness — which it supervises — and a review of the merits, which it does not undertake. Whether the adjudicator failed to afford a party a fair opportunity to be heard, as opposed to simply reaching a decision the losing party disagrees with, is the recurring dividing line in CIPAA set-aside applications.

The enforcement contest followed the familiar pattern. In connected proceedings two originating summonses were heard together — one to set aside an adjudication decision and one to invoke section 28 of CIPAA to enforce it — with a further application to stay the adjudication decision pending the disposal of a related civil suit. This set-aside, enforce and stay constellation is the standard shape of a contested adjudication, in which the unpaid party moves to convert the adjudicator's decision into an enforceable order while the paying party seeks to strike it down or hold it in abeyance until the underlying merits are resolved in the ordinary courts. The company's footprint is a clear illustration of how the CIPAA regime's swift, provisional remedy is tested against the narrow supervisory grounds — chiefly excess of jurisdiction and breach of natural justice — on which the courts will interfere with an adjudicator's decision.