From mediation legislation developments in the Ukraine to the contribution of mediation and mediators in these times of uncertainty and opportunity, over the past month the posts on the Kluwer Mediation Blog have addressed a wonderful assortment of topics. In Putting Away Childish Things, John Sturrock considers the loss of civility which appears commonplace nowadays,…
Escalation clauses (or multi-tiered dispute resolution clauses) need careful drafting so that the wording is both enforceable and commercially useful – and does not produce unexpected surprises. With regard to clauses that provide for ‘final’ dispute resolution by means of arbitration, in particular, there is uncertainty as to the consequences of the parties’ failure to…
The situation that the Bundesgerichtshof was recently faced with in a case is not uncommon: whilst a state court still reviews an arbitral tribunal’s preliminary ruling on its competence, the arbitral tribunal delivers its final award on the merits. This raises one question: What are the implications for the pending challenge to jurisdiction? In previous…
Drafted by HSF Partner, Mathias Wittinghofer, and Associates, Tilmann Hertel and Nils Kupka, from HSF’s Frankfurt office In 1999 Germany adopted the UNCITRAL Model law on International Commercial Arbitration (“ML”), but with a material addition: German law stipulates that prior to the constitution of the arbitral tribunal an application can be made to a German…
This article discusses the successful challenge of a unanimous arbitral award on the grounds that the arbitral tribunal was improperly constituted due to the bias of one of the three arbitrators. The challenge was successful before the Higher Regional Court of Munich (Decision of Feb. 2nd 2014, Case 34 Sch 7/13). The German Supreme Court,…
Dear Readers, you may have noticed the dearth of recent posts, for which we make no excuses. It is late summer for the northern hemisphere contributors. At this point, most of us are lingering poolside at the Kluwer International Arbitration Resort and Amusement Park, sipping procedural cocktails in the waning light as the children take…
The Dubai Court of Cassation stays firmly on course in its enforcement of foreign arbitration awards under the 1958 New York Convention for the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards (NYC) and hence keeps consolidating its pro-NYC enforcement practice. This has most recently been demonstrated by the Court’s pro-Convention approach in Case No. 434/2014…
Germany’s position on international investment law and investor-State arbitration is attracting increasing attention since the signing of the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in September 2014 has been deferred, inter alia, because of opposition from Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy. Is Germany, the country that not only has…
It is nearly a trite truism that New Zealanders are, in proportion to New Zealand’s size, over represented in international arbitration. A truism confirmed by John Beechy during an address at the AMINZ International Arbitration Day in Auckland on 18 February. The theme of the Day was how New Zealand could play a more prominent…
The Pechstein decision of the Munich Court of Appeals (Oberlandesgericht) of January 15, 2015 has made headlines (see here and here). The Munich court refused to recognise an arbitral award of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), since it held the underlying arbitration agreement between Claudia Pechstein, the speed skater, and her sport’s governing…
A recent decision of the German Federal Supreme Court dated 8 May 2014 (case reference no. III ZR 371/12) again calls for a debate on the binding effect of an arbitration agreement for a non-signatory – a well-known and highly-debated phenomenon since the Dow Chemical arbitration. The Dow Chemical case According to the award rendered…
In an order dated 28 January 2014 (file number III ZB 40/13), the German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, the “Court”) clarified that an arbitral award can only be set aside in recognition or enforcement proceedings by a state court in “extremely exceptional cases”, i.e. if an award breaches the fundamental principles of the German legal…
