Cases - John Doyle Construction Ltd v Laing Management (Scotland) Ltd

Record details

Name

John Doyle Construction Ltd v Laing Management (Scotland) Ltd

Date

[2004]

Citation

ScotCS 141 (11 June 2004)

Keywords

Construction – litigation – loss and expenses – delay – apportionment – causation – dominant cause – global claim

Summary

The use of the dominant cause approach to delay analysis has been confirmed as the appropriate methodology to adopt by the Scottish case of John Doyle Construction Ltd v Laing Management. This case was heard in the Extra Division, Inner House, Court of Session by Lord Maclean, Lord Johnston, Lord Drummond Young; on the 11th of June 2004. This case is important for 3 reasons:

Firstly this case confirms that global claims are acceptable where it is possible to identify a causal link between a package of events for which the employer is responsible and a package of additional costs.

Secondly, this case confirms that if there are concurrent causes for a particular loss or package of losses that identification of the dominant cause of loss as one for which the employer is responsible will be sufficient to establish liability.

Thirdly, this case confirms that where there are concurrent causes of loss and where it is not possible to establish the dominant cause of loss as one for which the employer is responsible, it may nevertheless be possible to apportion the loss between the causes for which the employer is responsible and other causes. Provided that the event for which the employer is responsible is a material cause of the loss the Court confirmed that apportionment of loss between the different causes is possible in an appropriate case, such as where the causes of the loss are truly concurrent in the sense that they operate together at the same time to produce a single consequence.

Therefore it is not open to the Employer to dismiss all or part of a Contractor's claim on the basis that there were (or may have been) elements of concurrent delay if the dominant cause of delay is one for which the Employer is responsible.

Also, a claim should not be dismissed solely on the basis that there are elements of the costs which have been calculated on a 'global basis'. The above case confirmed that a global claim should not be dismissed if there was a possibility of the claiming party being able to demonstrate chains of causation between individual causes and heads of loss, or of the claiming party being able to demonstrate that the dominant cause of the loss was the Employer's responsibility, or of the claiming party being able to use the process of apportionment to divide the costs between the various causes.