The Court held that compliance with s 13(5) of the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) — the prohibition on serving more than one payment claim per reference date — is a jurisdictional requirement, and a payment claim served in contravention of it is invalid and cannot found an adjudication determination. This departed from earlier authority (Energetech) which had treated s 13(5) as non-essential under the Brodyn framework, with McDougall J holding that the shift to jurisdictional error analysis mandated by Chase Oyster Bar required this conclusion. The Court also held that under a cost-plus contract providing for a defects liability period, the final payment claim reference date arises at the expiry of that period, not before, and accordingly a claim submitted during the defects liability period that merely repeated previously rejected claims could not constitute a valid payment claim referable to a new reference date.
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