TCC guidance on preserving jurisdictional objections in adjudication

A recent TCC decision has clarified the extent to which parties must raise jurisdictional objections during an adjudication if they wish to preserve the right to rely on those objections in subsequent enforcement proceedings. The responding party in this case had raised a jurisdictional objection of a general nature before the adjudicator, but the court refused to allow new arguments to support that objection raised for the first time by Counsel in the enforcement proceedings. The case is likely to encourage responding parties to make more comprehensive jurisdictional objections and to request additional time in the adjudication timetable to allow them to do so. 

Murnells London Ltd v Beale

This dispute arose from renovation works at Foxhill Manor, Northamptonshire. After an initial letter of intent (addressed to “Murnells Limited”), unsuccessful attempts were made to execute a JCT contract via DocuSign naming the contractor as “Murnells London Limited” (“MLL”). Following termination in November 2024, MLL served a notice of adjudication and received a decision in its favour in May 2025.

During the adjudication, Beal had raised a number of jurisdictional challenges, including that the wrong Murnells company had referred the dispute i.e. MLL instead of Murnells Limited. The defendant had also made a general reservation of its rights to raise future arguments as to jurisdiction, “which may be of any nature, whether previously raised or not”.

The adjudicator rejected this jurisdictional challenge on the basis that the DocuSign contract, although not formally signed by both parties, had becoming binding and superseded the letter of intent.

What changed at enforcement?

During the enforcement proceedings, Beale’s Counsel raised three new arguments in favour of its jurisdictional objection in relation to the identity of the contracting party:

• that the parties had agreed to waive a monetary cap in the letter of intent with Murnells Limited;
• that pursuant to a term of the letter of intent, the letter took priority over the JCT contract with regard to any conflict or differences; and
• that the JCT Contract should be rectified to substitute Murnells Limited for MLL.

MLL objected that these were new points, not taken in the adjudication and had therefore been waived. It relied on the Court of Appeal’s decision in Bresco Electrical Services v Michael J Lonsdale, which the court summarised as follows:

“(i) Any jurisdictional challenge must be appropriate and clear;

(ii) The purpose of preferring a reservation of position based on specific objections is to permit an adjudicator to investigate the point and to enable the referring party to decide whether the objection has merit;

(iii) Specific jurisdictional objections can be revisited at the enforcement stage; other jurisdictional grounds which might have been available to the objector are to be precluded;

(iv) Although to be avoided, general reservations may be sufficient, dependent upon the wording used. This is less likely if the objector knew or ought to have known of specific grounds for a jurisdictional objection, but failed to articulate them.”

In response, Beale argued that the three additional points raised were merely “sub-points” to the broader objection made about the identity of the contracting party. In its submission, “to set out every precise point of argument would result in an unacceptable slowing down of the [adjudication] process”. This would also tip the advantage unfairly in favour of the referring party who already has the benefit of a quick dispute resolution process.

Waiver upheld

The court agreed with MLL that the three new points raised by Beale had been waived during the adjudication proceedings. The court emphasised that adjudication was intended to be a fast-track process on policy grounds and, as part of this, temporary “rough justice” was to be anticipated. The ability to raise additional jurisdictional points on enforcement, even if subsidiary to jurisdictional objections made in the adjudication, would be inconsistent with this policy.

The generally worded reservation of rights used by Beale in the adjudication was not able to prevent a waiver, as in each case Beale ought to have been reasonably aware during the adjudication of the points subsequently raised on enforcement.

Conclusions and implications

The issue considered by the court in this case represents a commonly occurring dilemma for responding parties. Adjudicators will typically direct the time period for a Response as their first order of business upon receipt of the Referral Notice. It is usually at this point that responding parties will raise any jurisdictional objections available to them. However, the time taken in preparing these objections reduces the time available to prepare a Response. As a result, jurisdictional objections are often raised in high-level terms and developed further, both legally and factually, only if the matter reaches an enforcement hearing.

The present decision suggests that this is risky strategy for responding parties to adopt. It suggests that jurisdictional objections should be set out in as much detail as possible at the adjudication stage, including the identification of all relevant legal arguments or alternative positions. This will take more time, which will only reduce further the time available to prepare a Response. In some circumstances, responding parties may be well advised to request a specific timetable for the airing of jurisdictional objections, with a view to preserving the full period allowed for the Response after the conclusion of jurisdictional submissions.

The decision may also encourage referring parties to engage in ambush tactics over jurisdictional issues. Where difficult jurisdictional issues exist over the identification of contract terms or the identity of the contracting parties, referring parties may decide to adjudicate immediately rather than address those issues in correspondence beforehand. This will, in turn, place pressure on responding parties to quickly identify all relevant jurisdictional points, lest they be waived.

It remains to be seen whether the approach in this case will be adopted in other cases or whether greater latitude will be allowed to responding parties to supplement jurisdictional objections on enforcement. Another recent TCC case provides an interesting comparison in this regard. In High Tech Construction Ltd v WLP Trading and Marketing Ltd, the responding party claimed that the contract under which the adjudication had been referred had been forged. This was rejected by the adjudicator, but on enforcement the TCC accepted that the argument had a real prospect of success. However, the court noted that

“documentary evidence and narrative explanation of events relied upon by [the responding party] on this application is significantly more detailed than that placed before the Adjudicator … the conclusion by the Adjudicator on the material before him was entirely comprehensible; it may well be that had no further material been adduced on this application, WLP's case would not have overcome a 'real prospect of success' hurdle”

The present cases would suggest that a waiver argument may have been open to the referring party in such circumstances.

Finally, the decision in Murnell suggests that generally worded reservations as to jurisdiction are unlikely to be of significant value to responding parties. There may, however, be rare cases where such reservations assist in preserving jurisdictional objections which a party could not reasonably have been aware of during the adjudication proceedings.

References:

Murnells London Ltd v Beale [2025] EWHC 2651 (TCC)

High Tech Construction Ltd v WLP Trading and Marketing Ltd [2026] EWHC 152 (TCC)