Arbitral seat, Arbitration, Arbitration clause, India, Law governing the arbitration, Provisional measures, Supreme Court

(Norton Rose Fulbright LLP)/ /Leave a comment
YIAG

Yograj Infrastructure Ltd. Vs. Ssang Yong Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd. (on 1 September 2011) As reported in this blog, in May 2011 the Supreme Court of India (SCI) moderated the controversial principle it established in 2002 that allowed the Indian courts to intervene in arbitrations held outside of India unless that possibility was expressly…

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…

Arbitration Agreements

(Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP)/ /Leave a comment
WilmerHale

When the strong federal policy in favor of honoring arbitration agreements in the U.S. comes into conflict with another strong legal principle, which one should come out on top? The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently illustrated this tension in Kolev v. Euromotors West/The Auto Gallery, 658 F.3d 1024, holding that…

Annulment, Arbitration Awards, Arbitration Institutions and Rules, arbitrators’ conduct, BIT, Investment agreements, Investment Arbitration

(US Department of State)/ /Leave a comment

Iura novit curia (usually translated as “the court knows the law”) refers to the power and/or obligation of a court to conduct its own legal analysis outside the parties’ pleadings. While there are very few decisions on iura novit curia in the investment treaty arbitration context, a small number of investment treaty arbitral tribunals and…

Arbitration Proceedings, Discovery, Evidence, IBA Rules of Evidence, International arbitration

(MDisputes)/ /4 Comments

Conventional wisdom holds that one of the virtues of international arbitration is the ability to blend divergent procedures, generally referring to civil and common law traditions. The IBA Rules of Evidence, for example, seek to strike a balance among different legal cultures. “Harmonization” and “flexibility” are the terms commonly used to refer to this mixing…

Arbitrators, Confidentiality and Transparency, Enforcement

(The University of Kansas School of Law)/ /1 Comment
Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA)

It is not unusual for retired judges to serve as arbitrators. But what about sitting judges? A number of European countries permit sitting judges to serve as arbitrators. See Gary B. Born, International Commercial Arbitration 1449 (2009); see, e.g., U.K. Arbitration Act 1996, § 93. In the United States, however, ethics rules generally prohibit judges…

Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Institutions and Rules, Arbitration Proceedings, BIT, Class arbitration, Due process, Foreign Investment Law, ICSID Convention, Investment Arbitration

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

With the release of the Dissenting Opinion in Abaclat v. Agentina, we now have the benefit of a forceful critique of the majority’s decision that the Abaclat Tribunal has jurisdiction to hear the claims of over 60,000 Italian investors against Argentina under the ICSID Convention and the Argentina-Italy BIT.  Professor Georges Abi-Saab’s Dissenting Opinion (the…

Transparency in investment arbitrations

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As World Bank protests go, today’s was a pretty mild one. This afternoon, a group of labor and environmental activists huddled outside World Bank headquarters in DC to protest the on-going Pacific Rim v. El Salvador CAFTA arbitration, complete with a giant balloon of a sinister corporate-looking orange cat, an ensemble of guitarists, and panels…

Arbitral seat, Arbitration clause, China, Enforcement, Hong Kong, Mediation, Set aside an international arbitral award, Sovereign Immunity, UNCITRAL Model Law

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

2011 has delivered some significant arbitration developments in Hong Kong, most of which (with some exceptions!) have been undoubtedly positive. So, what were the highlights of the Hong Kong arbitration year – and what challenges might lie ahead? First, Hong Kong’s new Arbitration Ordinance (cap. 609) came into effect on 1 June 2011 (blogged here)….

BIT, Domestic Courts, Enforcement, ICSID Convention

(Editor in Chief, ASA Bulletin; LALIVE)/ /1 Comment

and Sandrine Giroud, Lalive In a decision issued on 23 November 2011, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court gave some welcome guidance on the rules of immunity applicable to the enforcement of ICSID awards in Switzerland (Decision 5A_681/2011 dated 23 November 2011 – The published decision is redacted but mentions the date of the ICSID award…

Arbitrator Challenges, Arbitrators

(Independent Arbitrator)/ /Leave a comment

The recently published abstracts of LCIA Court decisions on arbitrator challenges between 1996 and 2010 (Arbitration International, vol. 27, no. 3, 2011) make surprisingly interesting reading. They are an important reminder of the types of egregious arbitrator conduct that, while fortunately rare, can give the system a bad name unless promptly corrected. At the same…

BIT, Jurisdiction, Russia

(Khrenov & Partners)/ /Leave a comment

Over the past few months, Russia’s outgoing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been busy campaigning for foreign investment into various industries of the Russian economy. In a nutshell, the thinking behind the new plan for improving the investment climate in Russia is that easing access to strategic industries for foreign investors will do the trick….

Appointment of arbitrators, Arbitral seat, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Proceedings, India, Provisional measures, Set aside an arbitral award, UNCITRAL Model Law

(Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC))/ /3 Comments

International consciousness that India is an arbitration unfriendly jurisdiction has existed for some time now. This feeling owes in part to seemingly interventionist judicial views, in part to the delays that are oft complained of about the Indian judicial system and in part to the lack of infrastructure necessary for any arbitration friendly destination. This…

Arbitration Institutions and Rules

(CMS Cameron McKenna LLP)/ /Leave a comment
YIAG

As I write this blog, a team from CMS has been working hard on the next edition of the CMS Guide to Arbitration. As with the previous edition, the Guide will include chapters on arbitration written by practitioners from across Europe and beyond. It will also identify, as with many arbitration texts, resource material, including…

Arbitration Proceedings

(von Segesser Law Offices)/ /Leave a comment

In a decision dated 20 September 2011, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court held that the arbitration clause contained in a License Agreement for boxing equipment, interpreted by the CAS arbitral tribunal as referring to any dispute related to the said agreement, could equally cover disputes arising out of other related contracts, such as the contract…

Arbitration, Arbitration Awards, Damages, Damages experts, Fair market value, International arbitration

(FTI Forensic and Litigation Consulting)/ /3 Comments

A key part of an expert witness’s role involves explaining, in as clear terms as possible, complex accounting, economic and valuation concepts, to arbitration lawyers who may be less familiar with or even daunted by the world of finance. My suspicion is that expert witnesses could do much more to assist the arbitration community in…

Arbitrators, Bias, Disclosure, Enforcement, Europe, ICC Arbitration

(Herbert Smith Freehills LLP) and (University of Paris Descartes)/ /4 Comments
YIAG

In a decision rendered on 2 November 2011, the Reims Court of Appeal annulled an ICC Award for failure to disclose conflict of interest during proceedings, irrespective of the ICC Rules on challenging arbitrators in the case Avax v. Technimont.1)CA Reims, 2 Novembre 2011, n°. 10/02888 This post considers the latest instalment, the Reims Court…

Appeal, Arbitration Awards, Arbitration clause, Arbitration Proceedings, Commercial Arbitration, International arbitration, International Courts, Jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal, National Arbitration Laws, Russia

(White & Case LLP)/ /1 Comment
White & Case

On 7 October 2011 the Svea Court of Appeal ruled on whether an arbitral award should be declared invalid or annulled because the dispute – as alleged by the plaintiff – was not arbitrable under the Swedish Arbitration Act.1)Case no. T 6798-10. In finding that the dispute was arbitrable, the Svea Court considered several interesting…

Arbitrator Challenges, Arbitrators

/ /1 Comment

Arbitration practitioners have traditionally had very little illumination into the outcomes, let alone the reasoning, of arbitrator challenge decisions. Few arbitral institutions set out in writing to the parties the reasons for their challenge decisions, and even fewer institutions have made these decisions available to the larger arbitration community. Past posts on this blog have…

Arbitrators, Legal Practice

(Conway & Partners)/ /1 Comment

Occasional articles, postings, etc come out which discuss the lack of female representation in international arbitration. Perhaps possible reasons are suggested, perhaps only statistics given, but it is still clearly an issue. Beyond talking about it – how can we actually help the situation? In an article from June 2009, Michael Goldhaber noted that in…

Costs in arbitral proceedings, Efficiency

(Independent Arbitrator)/ /3 Comments

In my last blog, I offered praise for the ICDR, ICC and ICSID, for taking a number of important steps over the last few years to control excessive time and costs in international arbitration. Those initiatives already have resulted in measurable reductions in the average duration of cases. But there is more that the leading…

Costs in arbitral proceedings, Efficiency

(Independent Arbitrator)/ /Leave a comment

I’m honored to join today the fine ranks of contributors to this blog. For my first two posts, I thought I would offer a progress report of sorts on the critical task of controlling time and costs in international arbitration. This Part 1 focuses on the good news about various institutional reforms by the ICDR,…