Recent Posts

Some of you, gluttons for punishment, demand longer, more heavily-annotated versions of these usually short and mainly citation-free posts. Trying to oblige, I draw your attention to: “A Glance Into History for the Emergency Arbitrator” just published in the Fordham International Law Journal as part of the collection of papers presented at the Fordham Conference On International Arbitration in November 2016. “Efficiency With Dignity: Early Dispositions and the Beleaguered Arbitrator”, a soon to be published manuscript on which your comments are welcomed. Each is available upon emailed request, and the Fordham article is already uploaded to the Publications page of…
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Engaging in imitation as a sincere form of flattery I begin this post with a warning: very short post, as your author on May 8 is already a week overdue to you, and is threatened with duties not consistent with his devotion to you for the next two weeks. So, let us consider, quickly and with more than the usual disarray and risk of error from which these posts chronically suffer, what we take away from an ICSID Annulment Committee’s decision dated May 5, 2017 in the Vivendi and Suez v. Argentina case (Suez & Vivendi Universal v. Argentine Republic,…
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    [On April 5, 2018, I was contacted by e mail  by a person claiming to be the real party in interest in relation to the named defendant in the case discussed in this post. That person maintained that the phrase “Toronto scammer” in this post was defamatory and threatened legal action. I have modified this post to say “alleged Toronto scammer” as I have and at the time of writing the post had no facts other that the plaintiff’s allegations recited in the Court’s opinion.]   This month Arbitration Commentaries applauds the ICC for a small but valuable…
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Specialists of investment arbitration practicing beyond US borders shall take comfort from the decision of a US District Judge in Washington DC confirming a Canadian mining investor’s $1.2 billion award against Venezuela for expropriation and denial of fair and equitable treatment, under the Canada-Venezuela bilateral investment treaty. (Crystallex International Corp. v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 2017 WL 1155691 (D.D.C. Mar. 25, 2017)).  Why “comfort”?: (1) Because the Court applied relatively well-settled US arbitration law that treats questions of “arbitrability” as having been delegated to the arbitrators when the applicable agreed-upon arbitration rules state that the arbitrators shall have power decide…
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Party autonomy and American litigation custom sometimes collide in disconcerting fashion in arbitrations involving American counsel, whether international or domestic. One such collision involves the establishment early in the case of an agreed or imposed order concerning the confidentiality of exchanged information (“Protective Order”).  The parties have an understandable desire for formal confidentiality restrictions applicable to the data that they will be required to share with adverse parties who may be, or may be aligned with, actual or potential business competitors. But the templates for Protective Orders that many US counsel will retrieve as drafting models for their arbitral confidential…
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After the decision of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals in the Gusa case (CBF Industria De Gusa S/A v. AMCI Holdings, Inc., 846 F.3d 35, 2017 WL 191944 (2d Cir. Jan. 18, 2017)), there is much to know about enforcing foreign arbitral awards against alter egos of award debtors that we did not know before. Most importantly, it would appear that the award debtor, named in the award, need not be named as a Respondent in the award confirmation case under FAA Section 207. If Gusa were limited to its facts, that might only be the case where…
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