ISG Retail Ltd (ISG) was ordered by several adjudicators to pay up various whopping lumps of cash to its roofing and cladding contractor, FK Construction Ltd (FK), on its Avonmouth subcontract. ISG didn’t obey. The fuss that properly followed took the combatants into the High Court, and I want to focus on the status of adjudicators’ decisions. The relevant term here is “temporary finality”, which means that the adjudicator’s decision is binding (even if wrong) and is to be obeyed unless or until the High Court hears the same dispute all over again; then the court’s decision will trump and extinguish the adjudicator’s decision.

Five adjudicators nailed ISG to pay up £1.7m to FK. The High Court came to a very different decision. ISG admitted the adjudication results were binding and it ought to have obeyed, but it argued in court that they were only temporarily binding and that the adjudication awards were wrong. The court agreed with all that.

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