On 11 August 2023, the Santiago Arbitration and Mediation Center (“CAM Santiago”) – Chile’s main arbitration center – presented its new regulation on emergency arbitration, which was incorporated into the 2021 National Arbitration Rules (the “CAM Santiago Arbitration Rules”). The amended version of these rules also came into effect recently, on 1 September 2023. …
Readers of this blog need little convincing of the advantages of arbitration over litigation. Historically, one of the hold-out trump cards of litigation was the possibility of court-ordered (and thus, enforceable) interim relief. Having identified this problem, the SCC Arbitration Institute in 2010 was among the first arbitral institutions to introduce rules allowing the parties…
The annual “Great Debate” took place on the fourth day of Australian Arbitration Week. This event, organised with the support of hosting sponsor Corrs Chambers Westgarth, has now become a mainstay of Australian Arbitration Week, and involves a lively comedic debate between Team Arbitration and Team Litigation about which method of dispute resolution should reign…
During the Paris Arbitration Week, HKIAC held a webinar on “Protecting your interest through interim relief from Mainland Chinese courts”, two years after the unprecedented Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (the Arrangement) came into…
In 2019, Mainland China and Hong Kong entered into a groundbreaking bilateral arrangement regarding interim measures for arbitration, i.e., Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (the “Arrangement”).1)Thanks to Lingming Xu for his contribution to…
On 1 October 2019, the Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (the “Arrangement”) came into force. It was previously reported on the blog here and here. On 8 October 2019, the first interim measure under…
A special COVID-19-themed SIAC Philippines webinar took place on 18 June 2020. The webinar examined the availability of interim relief to parties to commercial disputes, both in international arbitration and through courts in the Philippines and Singapore, with the panel members sharing their observations on trends and changes since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic….
On 1 October 2019, Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong bodies brought into force a reciprocal arrangement with significant implications for Hong Kong as a seat of arbitration. The arrangement allows the courts of each jurisdiction to award interim measures in support of arbitrations seated in the other territory. Parties to Hong Kong-seated arbitrations have been…
Background The ICC Commission on Arbitration has recently published a report on Emergency Arbitrator (“EA”) Proceedings (“Report”) that promises to “offer guidance to users, counsel and EAs to facilitate the use of EA proceedings through increased transparency and predictability”. The Report analyses the 80 cases in which the ICC EA procedures have been used in…
Introduction On April 2, 2019, the Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“HKSAR”) signed the Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“Arrangement”). This…
In Part I of this post I discussed how the Arrangement excluded ad-hoc arbitration and how it raised certain issues on jurisdiction of the courts. In Part 2, I discuss other aspects of the Arrangement. Interaction between Arrangement and CICC The interaction between the Arrangement and the China International Commercial Court (“CICC”) is also…
Introduction On 2 April 2019, the Supreme People’s Court and the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region announced the signature of the “Arrangement Concerning Mutual Assistance in Court-ordered Interim Measures in Aid of Arbitral Proceedings by the Courts of the Mainland and of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region” (“Arrangement”). This announcement as…
On 15 December 2017, the renewed Supreme Court was launched in Ukraine, which triggered the entry into force of the new amendments of, inter alia, Civil and Commercial Procedure Codes. Within this broader judicial reform, a number of long-awaited changes in legal framework for international commercial arbitration have been brought forward, including the following: reducing…
The Hungarian Parliament recently passed new legislation on arbitration (Act LX of 2017 on Arbitration, the “2017 Act”) that will reform Hungarian arbitration law as of 1 January 2018. The 2017 Act, considering both the shortcomings of the current Hungarian legislation (Act LXXI of 1994 on Arbitration, the “1994 Act”) and the amendment of the…
So called “emergency arbitration” is raising considerable interest among international arbitration practitioners, as the importance of this tool aimed at protecting the parties’ rights either during the period between the filing of an arbitration request and the constitution of the arbitral tribunal or in the course of the proceedings, before the award is rendered, is…
Introduction Western Australia has many of the hallmarks of an arbitral hub: from a stable liberal democracy, a reliable and predictable judiciary, and very low rates of corruption, to offices of numerous national and international law firms, world-standard business hotels (albeit only a recent arrival), and an efficient international airport (again, only of late, but…
Arbitration is an increasingly popular form of dispute resolution in the field of construction, particularly for international projects where parties are of different nationalities, and where at least one party is unlikely to be operating on home soil. However, a commonly cited disadvantage of arbitration as opposed to court litigation is that there may not…
“When Justice Delayed Would be Justice Denied: Emergency Arbitrators and Interim Measures in International Arbitration” was the subject of the 28th Annual Workshop of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA), which took place on 16 June 2016 in Dallas, Texas. Under the leadership of ITA’s Chair, Abby Cohen Smutny (White & Case), and the conference…
There appears to be a gradual shift in international arbitration, towards an assumption that parties to an arbitration agreement who are seeking interim relief will look first to the tribunal, rather than to the national courts. This is seen in recent iterations of the institutional rules, such as the 2012 ICC Rules, the 2014 LCIA…
