Autumn 2006 Newsletter Contents Into The Unknown Season Of Goodwill Farewell Andre Toon Done Doon Day Of Reckoning Artistic Licence Gizmos Again A Free Lunch Sweet As Nectar Security Concerns Going For A Spin The Cap Does Not Fit While It's Hot? Code Cracking Bad Connection Broken Trusts You Can't Take It With You Dividend Returns IR35 RIP? Spam Spam Spam Breaking Up Duty Calls Time Shift Moving Vans

Spam Spam Spam A recent decision of the High Court may seem a bit tough to anyone who has too much in the Inbox to read it all. A company was in dispute with another business, which sent notice of commencement of arbitration proceedings to it by e-mail. Instead of using personal e-mail addresses that might have reached the legal and management personnel, the plaintiff used a generic address taken from the company's website and intended for cargo service bookings. Unfortunately, the people responsible for dealing with e-mails to that address had no idea what these messages meant. They thought they must be spam and took no action. The arbitration proceeded merrily without the defendant being aware of it, and a final award was made against it. Rather bewildered, the company said that it had not received any notice of the proceedings and therefore should not be bound by the arbitration. The High Court said that the notices were properly served on the company - there was nothing in its contracts or on its website that said this address could not be used for the particular purpose. It should have established procedures to make sure that important messages were identified and dealt with. That's a nasty thought - how many important messages are lost in the floods of worthless rubbish that often fills up e-mail accounts? How sure can you be that all important messages coming in to your business will be identified and acted on? There is an important difference between being sued and being taken to arbitration. If you are being sued, e-mail will only be an effective way of serving notices if you have agreed to it in writing and specified the address to be used. The High Court held that arbitration was a less formal procedure and a more relaxed regime applied to the effective service of documents. If you have clauses in contracts dealing with arbitration, it may be worth reviewing them to see if you can specify how notices are served.