Antoine Smiley and Raeesa Rawal (of Gleiss Lutz) have taken the top honour and received the prestigious Brooking Prize 2017. Their prize-winning paper titled: “Locked behind Time Bars” discusses the topic of contractual time bars in common law jurisdictions, and the need for legislative intervention to overcome situations of obvious unfairness that the common law is ill-equipped to redress.
The Brooking Prize is open to entrants from around the world who are invited to submit a substantive paper on an area related to construction law. The prize is named after The Hon Robert Brooking AO QC in recognition of his Honour’s pioneering contribution to the study and practice of construction law in Australia.
The papers are primarily assessed on:
- The originality of thought or approach and contribution to the study or practice of construction law or its application in the industry; and
- The quality of analysis and discussion, with considerable weight being given to the freshness of ideas and the value of the work to the industry.
The award will be presented by The Hon Robert Brooking AO QC in July during the SOCLA National Conference 2017. Alongside preeminent lawyers, counsel, and engineers in the construction industry in the Asia Pacific region, Antoine has been invited to speak at the conference on the subject of the winning paper.
Raeesa has subsequently joined Reed Smith as an associate in the Energy & Natural Resources group.