Shepherd Construction v Kingspan & Ors was a c.£70m multi-party fire safety and cladding dispute in the Technology and Construction Court, listed for an 11-week trial from October 2024 and featured in The Lawyer's Top 20 Cases of 2024.
The Dispute
Shepherd Construction was engaged as main contractor for the Northern Quarter mixed-use development in Colindale, London. The claim centred on numerous issues with the construction of the external wall systems of the buildings, in particular the use of insulation alleged to be non-compliant with the Building Regulations.
The 12-party case was among the first to deploy the new cause of action against cladding and construction product manufacturers under section 149 of the Building Safety Act 2022, and contributed significantly to the developing legal landscape around fire safety claims against product manufacturers — an area of major importance for contractors, developers, and insurers dealing with post-Grenfell remediation programmes.
Significance
Claims against construction product manufacturers under the Building Safety Act 2022 remove a long-standing gap in the recovery options available to contractors who have carried out remedial works: previously, liability was typically confined to the contractual chain. The Shepherd Construction litigation was one of the earliest large-scale tests of that new statutory route.
Coverage: Legal Business — Disputes Yearbook 2024