Fiona Sinclair QC, Siân Mirchandani and Roger Mallalieu
December 2015
A paper presented to the Society of Construction Law at meetings in Birmingham on 1st July and London on 8th September 2015
Equitable set-off has traditionally been a difficult defence to define. The Court of Appeal in Geldof Metaalconstructie v Simon Carves reviewed a number of important cases and in drawing the threads together has rationalised the test for equitable set-off. In this paper the judgment of Rix LJ is reviewed and the implications of that judgment considered.
In 2014, in Coventry v Lawrence (No 1), the Supreme Court was given an opportunity to review some important aspects of the law of private nuisance: how easements may arise by prescription, noise as a specific version of nuisance, the remedies available (damages or injunction?) and the relationship of what is in effect a part of land law to the public law of land use planning. The outcome sets the law on a new course in several directions.
Driven by the Government’s 2011 Construction Strategy requirement for the industry to move towards BIM, its implementation is gathering pace and throws up a host of interesting legal challenges. May Winfield’s paper seeks to set out a contractual framework or checklist of contract terms for use in any BIM-enabled project.
