Arbitration, Arbitration Act, Arbitration Awards, Commercial Arbitration, Domestic Courts, Eastern Europe, Enforcement, English Law, European Law, New York Convention, Pro arbitration

(White & Case LLP)/ /Leave a comment
White & Case

Following the path of the hotly debated West Tankers decision, in African Fertilizers v BD Shipsnavo, the English Commercial Court held that a declaratory award is enforceable, allowing judgment to be entered on the same terms as the arbitral award. Such an order enables a party to obtain the material benefit of the award and…

Arbitration, Damages, Damages experts, Dispute Resolution, Fair market value

(FTI Forensic and Litigation Consulting)/ /2 Comments

This is the second article in a three-part series summarising the main valuation methodologies used for the purposes of determining economic loss. In part one, I provided an overview of the market-approach methodology. I now turn to the income-based approach, focusing on the discounted cash flow (DCF) methodology. In my previous article, I noted that…

Arbitrator Challenges, Arbitrators, Bias

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What makes an international arbitrator different from a national judge? All of us in the arbitration world have a pretty solid answer to this question. At what point do the distinctions between an international arbitrator and an international judge melt away? That’s a bit of a trickier question, depending on the case. With the increase…

Arbitration Awards, draft Restatement, Enforcement, European Convention on International Commercial Arbitration 1961 (ECICA), Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), forum non conveniens, Inter-American Conventions, New York Convention

(Wayne State University)/ /Leave a comment
Institute for Transnational Arbitration (ITA)

On December 14, the Second Circuit rendered its decision in Figueiredo Ferraz e Engenharia de Projecto Ltda. v. Republic of Peru, 2001 WL 6188497 (2d Cir. Dec. 14, 2011), which represents a significant development in the court’s jurisprudence on forum non conveniens dismissals of actions to enforce foreign arbitral awards. As explained below, the decision…

Arbitration Institutions and Rules, International arbitration

(Linklaters)/ /Leave a comment

The P.R.I.M.E. Finance dispute resolution services and its Arbitration and Mediation Rules were launched at the opening conference of P.R.I.M.E. Finance in the Peace Palace in The Hague on 16 January 2012. Dutch Minister of Finance Jan-Kees de Jager officially opened P.R.I.M.E. Finance, which offers dispute resolution services in the area of complex financial products….

Arbitrators, International arbitration, Sport arbitration

(von Segesser Law Offices)/ /Leave a comment

At its session of 15 November 2011, the International Council of Arbitration for Sports (ICAS) amended Article 14 of the Statutes of the bodies working for the settlement of Sport-related Disputes (Article S14) and abandoned the old regime which provided that with regard to the list of CAS arbitrators, the ICAS had to respect a…

BIT, Foreign Investment Law

(Independent Arbitrator)/ /Leave a comment

The recent decision in Spyridon Roussalis v. Romania (ICSID Case No. ARB/06/1) is prompting renewed debate over whether ICSID arbitration, now the leading mechanism for investors to pursue treaty-based claims against host States, may also be used by those States to assert related counterclaims against the investors, allowing all such claims to be settled in…

Appeal, Arbitration Awards, arbitrators’ conduct, Bias, Enforcement, National Arbitration Laws, Principle of finality, Pro arbitration, Public Policy, Waiver

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

Last month’s judgment of the Hong Kong Court of Appeal (“CA“) in Gao Haiyan and Xie Heping v. Keeneye Holdings and another CACV 79/2011, is the latest in a long line of cases demonstrating the pro-enforcement approach of the Hong Kong courts. The decision makes clear that it is not the place of the Hong…

Enforcement, Middle East, New York Convention

(Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP)/ /Leave a comment
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

The International Bar Association annual conference in Dubai in November put the spotlight on the arbitral regime in Dubai. Several “hot topics” were discussed, including the possibility that counsel representing parties in arbitrations in Dubai would be charged a hefty fee by the Dubai government and the prospect of a new United Arab Emirates (UAE)…

Annulment, Waiver

(Linklaters)/ /3 Comments

After the 2011 Decree which reformed French arbitration law, the number of countries having arbitration acts expressly providing for the possibility of waiving setting aside proceedings at the seat has increased. In view of the fact that arbitration rules of some institutions provide for a waiver of “any form of recourse” against awards rendered under…

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…