The High Court awarded Michael Feeney Contractors and Civil Engineering Limited €178,996.17 in a dispute over work on a house at Cleggan, Co. Galway, and ordered contractual interest of €24,335.03. Mr Justice Hogan stayed enforcement for five months from 15 November 2010.
The company had sought summary judgment for €219,811.83, which it said was due for construction work and services. A written contract dated 14 August 2008 set a price of €604,302.50. Payments were due in stages based on certification by the defendant’s engineer.
The judgment recounts that Fionnuala Murray Roberts said she relied on the engineer in agreeing to the contract. She maintained that she had not been told the contract price included external works, despite having asked to defer those works. She also said she realised the house was unaffordable after a second stage payment of €139,000 was certified in November 2008, and that she instructed the engineer in January 2009 to tell the contractor to stop work. Work ceased around February, though the parties disputed when the instruction was received and acted on.
The judgment records that the defendant was suing the engineer separately for professional negligence. Hogan J said he would not comment on those proceedings because he had only imperfect knowledge of them and the engineer had not had an opportunity to present his case. He rejected the argument that the contractor’s claim should await resolution of that separate dispute: the engineer was not a party to the building contract.
The court found the contractor prima facie entitled to sums certified under the contract. It treated the first invoice as paid. A third payment of €80,816 had been certified on 19 February 2009. Given the dispute about the stop-work instruction, the judge allowed €40,000 of that payment and adjourned the balance to a plenary hearing, where the defendant could seek to show that the additional sum resulted from the contractor failing to follow her instructions.
The judgment states that the award was €178,996.17, with contractual interest of €24,335.03. It does not resolve the separate professional negligence proceedings or the disputed balance of the third payment.