In his 2014 Assenting Opinion on a security for costs motion in RSM v. Saint-Lucia, arbitrator Dr. Gavin Griffith Q.C. described third-party funders as “mercantile adventurers” and associated their activities with “gambling” and the “gambler’s Nirvana: Heads I win and Tails I do not lose.” This was no voice in the wilderness. The increasingly prevalent…

The 4th Annual Joint Conference on International Energy Arbitration, co-hosted by the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA), the Institute for Energy Law (IEL), and the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), took place on January 12-13, 2017, in Houston, Texas. Under the guidance of conference co-chairs Suzana Blades (ConocoPhillips, Houston),…

The 3rd Annual Joint Conference on International Energy Arbitration, co-hosted by the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA), the Institute for Energy Law (IEL), and the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), took place on January 14-15, 2016, in Houston, Texas. Under the guidance of conference co-chairs C. Mark Baker (Norton…

The 27th Annual Workshop of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (“ITA”), which took place on June 17-18 in Dallas, Texas, examined  “Subconscious Influences in International Arbitration”.  The Workshop was organized by co-chairs José Astigarraga of Astigarraga Davis (Miami), Professor Margaret Moses of Loyola University Chicago School of Law (Chicago) and Luke Sobota of Three Crowns…

and Michael Leathes Among the early words of wisdom expressed by Sherlock Holmes in the first of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 56 novels, A Scandal in Bohemia in 1891, was this classic line: I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit…