South America

Brazil, CBAr 21st, Corporate disputes, International Arbitration Procedures, Latin America, South America

, (Fialho Salles Advogados)/ /Leave a comment

In line with current discussions in Brazil’s arbitration community, especially in the context of Brazilian party leaders’ initiative to call for a vote on a controversial bill to amend the Brazilian Arbitration Act (“BAA“) on an urgent basis (previously covered here), one of the panels focused on the controversy of whether information regarding corporate arbitral proceedings…

Brazil, CBAr 21st, Climate change, Corporate, Corporate disputes, Environment, ESG, International environmental disputes, Latin America, South America

(Barbosa, Müssnich & Aragão Advogados – BMA)/ /Leave a comment

From 28 to 30 September 2022, the Brazilian Arbitration Committee – CBAr held its 21st International Arbitration Conference (“21st CBAr IAC” or “Conference”) in Rio de Janeiro. Considering the rising number of arbitration proceedings related to corporate disputes, the subject of this year’s Conference was “Arbitration and Corporate Law”. The 21st CBAr IAC was a…

2018 In Review, Argentina, Belt Road Initiative, BIT, Bolivia, Brazil, Cooperation and Facilitation Investment Agreements, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Franchising Contracts, ICSID Arbitration, Latin America, Mexico, Model BIT, NAFTA, Public Procurement, São Paulo, South America, Uruguay, USMCA

(University of Aberdeen ), (Herbert Smith Freehills), and (Locke Lord LLP)/ /Leave a comment

        [Source:Google] In this post the Kluwer Arbitration Blog’s Latin American editorial team (Associate Editor Gloria Alvarez and Assistant Editors Daniela Páez  and Enrique Jaramillo) joins us in an adventure to reflect on the Blog’s 2018 coverage of arbitration developments in the region. First, it is worth recapping the environment and circumstances…

BIT, Denunciation, Ecuador, ICSID Arbitration, Latin America, South America

(Locke Lord LLP)/ /Leave a comment

This post is the conclusion of a two-part publication regarding the situation of investors in Ecuador vis-á-vis the country’s efforts to elude the substantive and procedural protections afforded by investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). The first part consisted of a review of the law applicable to entering and withdrawing from the International Centre for Settlement of…

BIT, Denunciation, Ecuador, ICSID Arbitration, South America

(Locke Lord LLP)/ /Leave a comment

“BITs and arbitration centers, such as ICSID, are an expression of an unjust moral order”, said Ecuador’s former President, Rafael Correa, back in 2014. Such animadversion led the country to denounce all its bilateral investment treaties (BITs) earlier this year. The Latin American nation’s feud with BITs and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment…

Appeal, Appellate Body, ISDS, Latin America, South America, Treaty

(Herbert Smith Freehills) and (CMS)/ /Leave a comment

Latin America is the region that has faced the largest number of investment treaty arbitration cases in the world, holding 30% of the total ICSID caseload (549 cases as of December 31, 2015).  South America alone, comprised by twelve UNASUR members, has faced 131 ICSID cases with a number of adverse outcomes for the host…

Annulment, Applicable Law, Arbitral seat, Arbitration, Arbitration Awards, Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Arbitration Proceedings, Enforcement, Latin America, Seat of the arbitration, Set aside an arbitral award, Set aside an international arbitral award, South America

(Universidad Monteávila (Caracas))/ /Leave a comment

One of the most important elements to consider when participating in arbitration proceedings is the available mechanisms to challenge the award of the arbitral tribunal. This element acquires an added significance when it comes to international arbitration where the award may be enforced in several jurisdictions. With that in mind, it is pertinent to refer…

Arbitration Institutions and Rules, ICSID Convention, Investment, Investment Arbitration, South America

(Universidad Monteávila (Caracas))/ /Leave a comment

On April 22, 2013, representatives of Members States of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (“ALBA” for its acronym in Spanish) met in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the manner in which their interests are affected by the activities carried out by transnational companies, under a reunion known as the…

Argentina, ICSID Convention, Investment, South America

(Stockholm University)/ /Leave a comment

So you placed your bets on Argentina’s recovery after the 2001 crisis? It is not too late to give it another thought. While Argentina’s economy grew by approximately 9 percent in 2011, it fell dramatically in 2012 to around 3 percent. The (unofficial) inflation rate is set to 25% and the dollar reached a staggering…

Appeal, Arbitration, Commercial Arbitration, Domestic Courts, International arbitration, Latin America, Section 1782 Discovery, South America

(Astigarraga Davis)/ /Leave a comment

On June 25th, 2012 the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which covers all federal appeals emanating from the states of Florida, Georgia and Alabama, decided that a private commercial arbitration tribunal in Ecuador used by the parties to resolve a commercial dispute is a ‘tribunal’ for purposes of the collection of…

Anti-suit injunction, Investment Arbitration, South America

(Notre Dame Law School)/ /1 Comment

On January 3, 2012 an Ecuador Appeals Court affirmed the $18 billion judgment against Chevron in the long-running battle over environmental damage. (Available in English and the original Spanish here). According to an unofficial English translation of the sixteen page opinion, the Court dismissed all of Chevron’s arguments, including the allegations of fraud. Here is…

Inter-American Conventions, International arbitration, Investment Arbitration, Investment protection, South America

(Herbert Smith Freehills LLP)/ /Leave a comment
Herbert Smith Freehills

On 11 March 2011, the UNASUR treaty entered into force. UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations) is a regional organisation that comprises all twelve South American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela. The entry into force of the treaty is an important development for the international arbitration community given some of the proposals that UNASUR is advancing, particularly in the field of investor-State arbitration.

BIT, Foreign Investment Law, Investment Arbitration, South America, Venezuela

(University of Victoria Faculty of Law)/ /Leave a comment

Two ICSID tribunals have now weighed in on the much-debated question of whether Art. 22 of Venezuela’s Foreign Investment Law provides Venezuela’s consent to ICSID arbitration. In Decisions on Jurisdiction dated June and December 2010, the Mobil and Cemex tribunals (both presided by the former president of the ICJ, Judge Gilbert Guillaume), rejected investors’ submissions…

Africa, Asia-Pacific, BIT, Canada, Energy Charter Treaty, Europe, International arbitration, International Law, Investment agreements, Investment Arbitration, Investment protection, NAFTA, North America, Russia, Set aside an arbitral award, Set aside an international arbitral award, South America

(Investment Arbitration Reporter)/ /Leave a comment

Last year, around this time, I offered a list of 10 investor-state arbitral awards I hoped to see in 2010. If time permits, I may do another list for 2011. But, first I thought I’d take a look back at last year’s list and offer a brief update on those cases. Rather, than do all…

Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Awards, Arbitration clause, Arbitration Proceedings, Brazil, Commercial Arbitration, Domestic Courts, South America

(TozziniFreire Advogados)/ /Leave a comment

International arbitration often involves parties, arbitrators, and counsel from both Common Law and Civil Law traditions, which sometimes creates misinterpretations about how evidence production will occur. The recent São Paulo court opinion determining that an ICC arbitral tribunal should widen the scope of the expert evidence it was considering in a dispute regarding the construction…

Arbitration, South America

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Here in the southern hemisphere, more precisely at Buenos Aires, Argentina, the 5th Annual Congress on Arbitration took place on the afternoon of Tuesday 12 and morning of Wednesday 13, October, co-organized by two institutions: CARAT and the Arbitral Tribunal of the Stock Market of Buenos Aires. Present at the event were a number of…

Domestic Courts, North America, South America

(Notre Dame Law School)/ /1 Comment

The ongoing saga regarding Chevron’s legal travails in Ecuador took an interesting twist this week. As I reported earlier, Chevron has secured key outtakes of the movie Crude that appeared to show alarming collusion between the plaintiff lawyers and the Court-appointed expert. According to pleadings filed yesterday pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1782, the outtakes include…

Arbitration Proceedings, Commercial Arbitration, Domestic Courts, South America

(Debevoise & Plimpton LLP)/ /1 Comment
American Society of International Law (ASIL)

This year’s ICCA Congress in Rio de Janeiro not only confirmed that nobody knows to party better than cariocas, but also served as an impressive reminder of the increasing pro-arbitration approach of Brazilian courts, the remarkable growth in the number of arbitration proceedings in Brazil and the high sophistication of the Brazilian arbitration bar. Yet…

Arbitration Proceedings, kompetenz-kompetenz, South America

(M.A. Ribas Law Firm)/ /Leave a comment

Less than two weeks before arbitration practitioners’ eyes turned to Rio de Janeiro for the ICCA Congress 2010, a court from that same jurisdiction rendered a decision improving case law on important matters related to arbitration. On May 12th, 2010, the Tribunal de Justiça do Estado de Rio de Janeiro (which is similar to a…

Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Arbitration Proceedings, Commercial Arbitration, Domestic Courts, kompetenz-kompetenz, South America

(Veirano Advogados)/ /Leave a comment
American Society of International Law (ASIL)

The Court of Appeals for the state of Bahia in Brazil recently handed down an arbitration-friendly decision and vacated an injunction intended to stay an arbitration proceeding. In FAT Ferroatlàntica S.L. vs. Zeus Mineração Ltda. and others, the Court of Appeals addressed the issue of whether the existence of conflicting arbitration clauses in contracts pertaining to a single economic transaction justifies judicial intervention at the outset of the arbitration. The Court of Appeals held that, provided an arbitration agreement exists, such issue is to be dealt with by the arbitrators, not by the Courts.

Arbitration Proceedings, forum non conveniens, Investment Arbitration, North America, South America

(Notre Dame Law School)/ /1 Comment

Yesterday a federal court in New York granted Chevron’s request for discovery of outtakes from the 2009 documentary Crude about the multi-billion dollar litigation in Ecuador. Chevron’s request was pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1782, which authorizes a judge in the United States to order discovery of evidence to be used in proceedings before a foreign…

Arbitration Proceedings, Investment Arbitration, South America

(University of Victoria Faculty of Law)/ /1 Comment

In this blog I return to the theme of investor misconduct, albeit in a different context from my previous posts:  host state criminal investigations during investment treaty arbitration proceedings.  This issue has arisen in a number of recent investment treaty arbitrations, most notably in a series of cases against Turkey (Cementownia, Europe Cement and Libananco),…

Domestic Courts, Investment Arbitration, North America, South America

(Notre Dame Law School)/ /Leave a comment

In the long-running battle between Chevron and Ecuador over environmental damage, a federal court in New York has denied Ecuador’s motion to stay arbitration of a Ecuador-U.S. BIT claim. In September 2009, Chevron filed a notice of arbitration alleging, among other things, that “Ecuador has breached … the Ecuador-United States BIT, including its obligation to…

International Legal Theory and Teaching, Legal Practice, North America, South America

(Investment Arbitration Reporter)/ /Leave a comment

The relationship between human rights and investment law is all the rage these days in academia. It seems like every week I come across a PhD student or a young academic who is tackling some aspect of the topic. But, while there are many scholars and writers looking to bridge the two fields, it’s rarer…