UK Supreme Court: liquidated damages survive termination
20 July 2021 The UK Supreme Court has held that accrued liquidated damages survived termination where the contractor never completed the work in question. The relevant contract was for the development of software by Triple Point, and provided for the payment of liquidated damages for undelivered work “per day of delay from the due date for delivery up to the date PTT accepts such work”. The Court of Appeal had noted that the “orthodox” position was that, if the work was never finished, liquidated damages accrued up to the date of termination of the contract, but not after. However, in Triple Point, the provision that the liquidated damages were to be paid up to the date of completion (when the works were accepted) meant that they had no application where the contractor never completed the works at all, and the employer would instead need to claim general damages with respect to the outstanding works. The Court of Appeal considered that the little-known case of...