The Court held that delivery of a USB stick does not constitute service of a copy of an adjudication application 'in writing' for the purposes of s 17(5) of the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW); service occurs only when the recipient accesses, opens and views the files stored on it. The Court further held that the Act requires the identical written instrument to be the adjudication application made to the authorised nominating authority, referred to the adjudicator, and served on the respondent — where different versions containing non-trivial differences were provided to each, the adjudicator lacked jurisdiction. The Court left open whether trivial differences between versions would vitiate jurisdiction or service.
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