How do you defend a smash and grab adjudication?

Attack the paperwork the claim is built on. A smash and grab is an adjudication, the fast statutory dispute process, in which the payee enforces the sum it applied for because the payer served no valid notices. The referring party must show both a valid application and the absence of valid notices, so test the application first: served by the contract's date, against the right round, in the required form, stating the sum and workings, free from ambiguity, which is read against the payee. Then hunt through everything sent inside the notice windows for a document that, whatever its heading, worked as a notice in substance, because courts judge documents by how a sensible reader would take them, and recount every date from the contract, since these claims sometimes rest on the other side's own miscounting. If the defence fails, the Notified Sum, the amount that legally must be paid, must be paid before any true value adjudication can begin, so take advice quickly: the timetable runs in days, not weeks.

A contractor is hit with a smash and grab for a subcontractor's £95,000 application. Rather than argue the work was worth less, its adviser goes at the paperwork. The application: sent by the contract date, to the right person, clearly against this round, free of ambiguity? It was sent a day early against the wrong reference, which may sink it. A trawl of the emails from the notice window turns up a valuation the surveyor sent that, though never headed as a notice, states a sum and workings and reads like one, so it may count as a Payment Notice in substance. A recount of the dates from the contract then shows the subcontractor miscounted its own deadline. Any one can defeat the claim, but if none holds the £95,000 must be paid before a true value challenge can start, so advice has to be taken within days.