Recent Posts

You are only human. You lead a busy professional life, and, while you have a few precious hours to watch American football on Sunday afternoons, you have no time (or patience) to slog through 20 pages of the federal district court decision that vacated the arbitration award of National Football League (NFL) Commissioner Roger Goodell that had (in)famously upheld the four-game suspension imposed on a certain player known to be the husband of a famous fashion model. (National Football League Management Council v.National Football League Players Association, 2015 WL 5148739 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 3, 2015)). If ever there were a task…
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We are all collection lawyers, more or less. That is, those of us who act as advocates in international arbitration. If you don’t have a good collection plan, enterprising Claimant counsels, maybe don’t start the case until you do. A personal favorite move is to grab real estate in Canada on Day #1 of the arbitration. Vancouver is particularly lovely on the first day of an arbitration, when the demonstrably rogue Respondent owns three homes with substantial equity. But sometimes even the well-heeled international finance types get ahead of themselves, and chart a course to win a battle (a Final…
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Shame on you (!!), subpoena-issuing international arbitrators sitting in Dallas, Texas. Here in NYC, where we have wrestled, maybe not to the ground but mightily, with the problem of arbitral subpoenas, we are reading about your case (Matter of Arbitration Between Tang Energy Group Ltd. and Catic USA, 2015 WL 4692459 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 6, 2015), and asking ourselves: “How ‘Bout Them Cowboys??!!“ Dear colleagues, if a party in your case wants a subpoena for a non-party witness located in San Francisco — even if he is a recognized international arbitration lawyer in San Francisco — then take your hearts,…
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All of us had to start somewhere. A few famous people perhaps reading or perhaps declining the invitation to read this post started in this business, sort of, back in the early/mid ’80s in a case-for-the-ages about an aborted hotel venture near the Pyramids. (Your author was, back in the day, doing legal battle with the Ayatollah K, who took our clients’ condo complex in Teheran by force and made a nice living in the real estate business, for a time). Anyway, more about the Pyramids case (Southern Pacific Properties (SPP) v. Arab Republic of Egypt, for you fussy types;…
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Pity poor Tiffany’s. Teeming with gold. Silver. Diamonds. Basking in the perpetual cinematic afterglow of a youthful Audrey Hepburn. But there is real suffering here at 57th and 5th. Consider: Tiffany’s remains mired in a trademark infringement debacle, in a US court in Manhattan, against online knock-off con artists who keep their accounts in Chinese banks. Legally savvy crooks, they have not bothered to defend the action on the merits, instead absorbing default judgments but wagering, wisely so far, on the ineffectiveness of US judgment enforcement methods to reach their assets in China. In the latest chapter, the federal district…
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Responding to the anguished cries of readers for a succinct review of the fate of Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) valuation methodology in recent investment arbitrations — a review to be offered without payment of conference fee, airplane fare, or subscription — Arbitration Commentaries steps to the lectern and reports: 1. In the now-legendary Yukos case, the controlling shareholders of the erstwhile oil colossus advanced DCF valuation as one of four alternative valuation methods, along with “comparable companies” and “comparable transactions” valuations as of the same date as the DCF valuation, and a “market capitalization” approach as of an earlier date….
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