The Full Supreme Court of South Australia has heard the appeal by Hardesty & Hanover against Justice Anderson refusal to enforce the expert determinations of Colin Fullerton, by which Mr Fullerton ordered Abigroup to pay the professional fees of Hardesty & Hanover for its design and construction support services for the Port River Expressway bridges. Justice Anderson had refused enforcement on the grounds that there was a cross-referencing error in the expert determination clause in the contract that Abigroup had drafted, which permitted Abigroup to treat the clause as void for uncertainty, and also on the ground that Hardesty & Hanover choosing to refer disputes to expert determination one by one, thereby bringing them within the enforceability limits in the contracts was a “contrivance”.
No date had yet been set for the delivery of the Full Court’s judgment.
