In a much anticipated decision, the Supreme Court of Canada has recently held that a contractor which is a trustee under a payment bond has an obligation to advise sub-contractors of the existence of the bond applicable to the project. In Valard Construction Ltd. v. Bird Construction Co., 2018 CarswellAlta 261, 2018 SCC 8, the […]

The Ontario Construction Lien Act, 2017 was given Royal Assent on December 12, 2017 as S.O. 2017 C.24. This statue changes the name of the Ontario Construction Lien Act to the Construction Act (which I will refer to as the new Act) and fundamentally changes the law relating to construction projects in Ontario. Before further […]

In the recently released decision in Riddell Kurczaba Architecture Engineering Interior Design Ltd v. Governors of the University of Calgary, 2018 CarswellAlta 10, 2018 ABQB 11, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench applied three potential aids to the interpretation to a client-consultant contract: contra proferentem; post-contract conduct; and estoppel. The court also applied the limitation […]

In South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority v. BMT Fleet Technology Ltd. 2017 CarswellBC 2587, 2017 BCSC 1683, the British Columbia Supreme Court recently held that a single notice purporting to commence several arbitrations against several respondents was procedural invalid. However, the notice was not totally void and could be amended by the applicant to […]

In Nzeadibe v. Khan, 2017 CarswellBC 2251, 2017 BCSC 1456, the British Columbia Supreme Court recently held that a building contract was illegal and unenforceable because it provided for the construction of a building which would have been contrary to the municipal building bylaw. The decision raises, once again, the contentious role of the doctrine […]

In Westpoint Capital Corp. v. Solomon Spruce Ridge Inc., 2017 CarswellAlta 580, 2017 ABQB 254, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench made a number of decisions relating to the priorities between lienholders and mortgagees. The court found that a mortgagee was not an “owner” of the land within the Alberta Builder’s Lien Act. In any […]

In Cardinal Contracting Ltd. v. Seko Construction (Vancouver) Ltd., 2017 CarswellYukon 107, 2017 YKSC 51, the Yukon Supreme Court recently considered whether a payment clause in a construction contract was a pay-when-paid clause which entitled the contractor to only pay the subcontractor if and when it was paid by the owner. The clause in question […]

On May 31, 2017, the Ontario Legislature gave first reading to Bill 142, which will enact the Construction Lien Amendment Act, 2017. By this legislation, substantial amendments are proposed to the Ontario Construction Lien Act, including the change of the name of the Act to the Construction Act. The text of Bill 142 may be […]

The United Kingdom Supreme Court recently considered the question of whether the performance standard or the design standard prescribed in the contract took precedence. In MT Hojgaard AS v E.ON Climate and Renewables UK Robin Rigg East Ltd & Anor [2017] UKSC 59, the court held that the performance requirement took precedence and that the […]