by Inna Uchkunova and Oleg Temnikov Foreword “The whole exercise was great fun and for me, I was then 26 years old, a great eye-opener – I learned a lot.” – Sir Elihu Lauterpacht on his advice given to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. in 1954, on which occasion it emerged the idea that “any contract…
By Tai-Heng Cheng* & Lucas Bento** Introduction On October 5th, 2012, a split ICSID tribunal determined that the Republic of Ecuador had breached the US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (“BIT”), and awarded damages of US$1.77 billion (US$2.3 billion with interest applied), reportedly the largest award ever to have been issued by an ICSID tribunal. This award…
Two major events have taken place recently regarding the situation of Bilateral Investment Treaties concluded between European Member States (“Intra-EU BITs”) and Bilateral Investment Treaties concluded between an European Member State and a State not Member of the EU (“Extra-EU BITs”). The fate of these agreements was surrounded up until now by a veil of…
There are many clients who are often engaged in industrious works that result in disputes. Typically, the applicable arbitral agreements requirement submitting claims to international arbitration and, in this author’s opinion, appropriately so. However, these same clients may also be subject to frequent claim assertions that lack any true merit. Despite this, there is not…
In a recent post, here, I argued that the time has come to move on from the gumshoe clue-hunting approach currently employed to select international arbitrators. Existing practices are severely outdated and unduly expensive in an era of information and technological efficiency. The process for selecting arbitrators, I argued, should be more transparent and key…
Nathalie Voser and Anya George Few Swiss cases have sparked as much debate in the arbitration community as the Swiss Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Vivendi vs. Elektrim. In that decision, the Supreme Court upheld the award of an arbitral tribunal seated in Switzerland which had declined jurisdiction over one of the respondents, Elektrim, after…
Whereas cases of direct expropriation have become relatively rare in international investment arbitration and claims of breach of fair and equitable treatment obligation or indirect expropriation are currently more common, the profile of respondents in ICSID arbitration proceedings has also changed. However, if both investors and host governments are likely to agree that States may…
On 14 October 2012, Justice David Williams of the DIFC Court of First Instance (Dubai International Financial Centre) applied a course correction by issuing a decision confirming the jurisdiction of the DIFC Courts to grant a stay in the presence of a valid arbitration agreement providing for a seat of arbitration outside the DIFC. Justice…
In the recent decision of PT Pukuafu Indah and others v. Newmont Indonesia Ltd and another ([2012] SGHC 187) the Singapore High Court (the Court) confirmed that it did not have jurisdiction to set aside an interim anti-suit injunction ordered by an arbitral tribunal. In reaching this decision, the Court added to a growing body…
A few months ago I wrote a post on this Blog about what I saw as “work left to do” in the Spanish arbitration system. I started with the need to build a regional court of arbitration on a par with those well-known centres in other jurisdictions, with the fundamental aim of taking advantage of…
The recent revisions to the Chinese Civil Procedure Law (the “CPL”) made some significant amendments to the arbitration law in China. In particular, the new CPL for the first time provides for pre-arbitration preservation measures to be available from the Chinese courts. The revisions will come into force on 1 January 2013. Under the existing…
In Astro Nusantara International BV v PT Ayunda Prima Mitra [2012] SGHC 212, the Singapore High Court set out the available recourse against an international arbitration award made in Singapore. This case has significant implications for Singapore as a seat of arbitration, and this note contrasts the position between Singapore and Hong Kong against the…
In a recent ruling of 18 October 2012, the Dubai Court of Cassation, the highest court in the Emirate of Dubai, against whose judgments lies no further appeal, confirmed the enforcement of a trilogy of DIFC-LCIA awards – one on liability and two on costs (all forming part of the same reference) – rendered by…
Arbitral institutions must feel at times like the psychiatrist in the joke from Annie Hall: A man goes to a psychiatrist and says, “my brother has a real problem. He thinks he’s a chicken.” The psychiatrist raises an eyebrow and says, “I see. Have you tried telling him that he isn’t a chicken?” The man…
It must be an arbitrator’s nightmare: Imagine a high-stake arbitration that goes on for years, the entire distance, including witness hearings and expert evidence, only for the final award to be set aside on procedural grounds. And this is exactly what the Frankfurt Court of Appeals (Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt) did in a judgment in February 2011:…
Broadly defined, the word “deposition” refers to the taking of a “written record of a witness’s out-of-court testimony.” (Bryan A. Gardner, Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th edition , p. 472.) This general definition notwithstanding, in practice the word “deposition” has become closely associated with US pre-trial discovery. The witness deposition, which is attended by lawyers for…
The addition of the good faith requirement to the 2010 IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration has been criticized in a recent law review article. In Good Faith, Bad Faith, But Not Losing Faith: A Commentary on the 2010 IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration, Pedro J….
In its important 2011 decision AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, the United States Supreme Court sharply limited the grounds on which a court may invalidate an arbitration agreement. A recent ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, In re Checking Account Overdraft Litigation MDL No. 2036, illustrates how lower courts are…
The problem of the law applicable to State contracts (i.e. contracts concluded between a foreign national and a State or a state entity) as well as the responsibility of States for the breach of these contracts has entertained the minds of scholars and practitioners ever since the famous PCIJ dictum in the 1929 Serbian Loans…
by Peter Bert and Joachim Glatter Disputes between the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (“CIETAC”) and its sub-commissions in Shanghai (“CIETAC Shanghai”) and Shenzhen (“CIETAC South China”) currently cause significant legal uncertainty. These internal issues at CIETAC create risks for parties that have agreed arbitration proceedings with these local sub-commissions in their contracts,…
Arbitration practitioners often put Ukraine below the average ranking of countries in terms of recognition of arbitration. Ukraine’s image of a not entirely arbitration-friendly jurisdiction is “promoted” with common thought about problematic enforcement of arbitral awards in Ukraine. In well-known case “Regent Company v. Ukraine”, the European Court of Human Rights (in its decision of…
In a recently published decision dated 6 August 2012 (4A_119/2012), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court confirmed its own jurisprudence according to which state courts facing a jurisdictional defense based on an alleged arbitration agreement must not assess in full the validity of the arbitration agreement. In such cases, the state court must limit itself to a summary examination of whether or not a valid arbitration agreement exists.
Over the summer, I read two discussions that gave some fascinating, albeit wholly depressing statistics about women arbitrators. The first was a great discussion initiated by Lucy Greenwood of Fulbright & Jaworski on the OGEMID listserv, which noted that only 6.5% of all commercial arbitrator appointments (both party appointments and institutional appointments) are of women.1)Ms….
By Justin D’Agostino, Tracy Wu and Briana Young The Hong Kong Court of Appeal recently awarded indemnity costs against an applicant who attempted unsuccessfully to set aside an arbitral award. In a decision that many will welcome, the Hong Kong court has sent another strong message of support for the finality of the arbitral process….
