Built on the wealth of practical, commercial and legal experience accumulated by the authors, the 1st supplement to the 14th edition Hudson’s Building and Engineering Contracts provides a comprehensive update on the law and interpretation of construction contracts.
The main developments of note during 2020 which the supplements covers are related to adjudication and insolvency. Bresco v. Lonsdale affirmed an insolvent company’s right to adjudicate and confirmed that the scheme of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 was not inconsistent with the rules governing the distribution of assets in insolvency. The Corporate, Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 contains provisions both of a temporary and permanent effect and the supplement covers this topic.
Apart from updates to insolvency and adjudication, this first Supplement contains a number of cases of interest which, as a matter of generality, illustrate the application of established principles, rather than breaking new ground. One of a number of particular areas of interest is the development of the jurisprudence in relation to damages for a loss of chance illustrated in the recent cases in Chapter 7.