Imagine with me, readers: A sovereign foreign State — India, for the sake of discussion — attracts the interest of a US enterprise to conduct a search for offshore hydrocarbon deposits and, if any are located, to determine their commercial viability. The State cedes aspects of its sovereignty contractually, in a number of ways. First, it gives the exploration outfit rights of occupancy for exploration purposes on a defined block of the State’s offshore waters. Second, it extends the period of the concessionaire’s right to be physically present on the block for an agreed period after hydrocarbon discovery in order…
Read More »

Significant foreign judgments concerning arbitration statutes based upon the UNCITRAL Model Law capture limited attention in the US, because the US is not at the federal level or under the laws of 44 of the 50 states a “Model Law jurisdiction.” But in some of the six states that have adopted international arbitration statutes based on the Model Law (California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Texas), the number of locally-seated international arbitrations is said to be on the rise (and there is at least anecdotal evidence that this is so; see, for example, last month’s post: “International Arbitration in the California…
Read More »

The decision of one party or group of parties to an international arbitration, more often than not the Respondent(s), to decline to advance their share of the deposits required for the fees and expenses of the arbitrators, has become so common that it may almost be said to be a standard feature of international arbitrations. And this is not necessarily or primarily a function of impecuniousness of the non-paying party. It is more often rather a business decision.  This is less often the case of course when the Respondents assert counterclaims against the Claimants, or cross-claims against one another, for…
Read More »

If you have no desire to participate in international arbitrations seated in California; if you systematically shun cases involving the life sciences industry; if you dodge arbitrations that raise persistent and difficult issues about U.S.-style pre-hearing discovery and state arbitration law; then this post is not for you.  Everyone else, please read on. To summarize: A New York State trial court judge last week enforced a deposition subpoena issued by a New York attorney based upon a California Superior Court commission to take the New York non-party witness deposition, where the California court had issued the commission upon an application…
Read More »

Reproduced below are the Power Point slides that accompanied an oral presentation by Mr. Goldstein to the International Arbitration Club of New York on March 19, 2018. A transcript of the presentation is expected to be available in the week of April 9 and will be uploaded to a revision of this post. *** 1/21 Looking for Law In All the Right Places: A Modern Spin on Jura Novit Arbiter *** 2/21 JNC – US & CANADA JUDICIAL POSITION “The concept of jura novit curia is not directly part of the law of Canada and a search of the usual Canadian…
Read More »

This post is the text Mr. Goldstein has prepared for an oral presentation in a panel program on provisional relief in aid of arbitration on April 5, 2018 in Washington, D.C. at the annual conference of the American Bar Association’s Section of Dispute Resolution. Mr. Goldstein’s co-panelists are the Hon. Faith Hochberg (Ret.) and the Hon. Bruce E. Meyerson (Ret.).   These remarks about interim measures in international commercial arbitration were prepared for listeners and readers, perhaps many of you, who have become arbitrators in international cases as a rather new phase of an illustrious career spent mainly within US…
Read More »