Successful outcome in complex construction dispute

Priya Sejpal advised a client in relation to a complex multi-party construction dispute which involved counter claims and was valued at around £5 million.

The matter was time critical, and therefore, Priya advised her client to enter into a stand-still agreement. There are time limitations on brining a legal claim, a claim can effectively be ‘timed out’, if too much time passes. A standstill agreement is an agreement that parties will not use limitation to defend a legal claim which avoids the risk of the claim timing out.

Priya also provided advice around the pre-action protocols, which is a set of rules and procedures that must be followed before a legal claim can be brought before the courts.

What was the outcome?

This legal claim was very important to Priya’s client and was business critical. Even though a standstill agreement was in place, Priya was able to engage on her client’s behalf in alternative dispute resolution using without prejudice save as to costs correspondence (WP).

WP correspondence is a negotiation with the opposing party(s) to settle the matter – parties may feel more comfortable to put forward offers to settle because the correspondence can’t be shown to the court until the court makes a decision and costs are discussed.

In this case, the WP negotiations were successful and there was no need for parties to engage in the expense and uncertainty of the matter being heard before the court.

Priya said “this was a particularly complex dispute, it was time critical and there were a number of parties. My client was pleased to have engaged in without prejudice negotiations to avoid the expense of court and to settle the matter on a more commercial basis.”