Recent Posts

For those whose careers in international arbitration have origins connected to the Iran-US Claims Tribunal (Tribunal) — and I am one of many — yesterday’s decision by the federal court of appeals in Washington, allowing a US company to recover damages for expropriation from the Islamic Republic of Iran under the 1955 US-Iran Treaty of Amity, as interpreted under Iranian law, resonates like a fondly-remembered ballad from the American Songbook. (McKesson Corp. v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 2012 WL 615831 (D.C. Cir. Feb. 28, 2012)). I leave it to others to consider the potential for future US litigation against Iran…
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1999 was not so very long ago. And over the last dozen years some areas of the law have necessarily moved rapidly to keep pace with developments in technology and their impact on how business is conducted.  That has not necessarily been the case in every corner of the law of international commercial arbitration.  Until a few weeks ago, counsel looking for guidance in US law on the “agreement in writing” requirement of the New York Convention could read, unhelpfully, a 1999 decision of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Kahn Lucas Lancaster, Inc. v. Lark International, Ltd.,…
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A tale from the Second Circuit: Two reinsurance executives regularly sitting as arbitrators were appointed, respectively, as party-appointed arbitrator and “umpire” (presiding arbitrator) in a reinsurance arbitration. While the case was pending but before the hearing, the same individuals were appointed, again as party-appointed arbitrator and umpire, in a second arbitration that bore certain relationships to the first. There was a similar but not identical issue of contract interpretation. There was a common witness whose testimony was important in each case. And there was a business connection, essentially successorship, between Claimant in Arbitration 1 and Respondent in Arbitration 2. These…
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Last year Chevron, as judgment debtor for a $17.2 billion environmental damages judgment issued by an Ecuador court, convinced a US district judge in New York to issue a global anti-enforcement injunction preventing the Ecuadorean parties from seeking enforcement of that judgment anywhere.  Late last year the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order vacating that injunction, but its written opinion, explaining why the injunction was improper, was not issued until now.   As you will see http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/83c7e33b-75ca-4735-acec-95593be09f03/2/doc/11-1150_op.pdf , the Court states that New York’s statute providing for recognition of foreign country money judgments cannot be invoked affirmatively…
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Faithful readers of Arbitration Commentaries will be familiar with several principles that are repeated in the cases discussed in this space.   One, mentioned in last week’s post concerning the DC Circuit’s vacatur of a investment arbitration award, is that US courts generally find “clear and unmistakable evidence” of an agreement to arbitrate “arbitrability” issues when the parties select rules, like the UNCITRAL Rules, that confer power on arbitrators to decide objections to their jurisdiction.  Another principle, mentioned for example in a post in November 2011 concerning a Second Circuit decision involving American Express, is that the Federal Arbitration Act does not…
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In a commentary appearing in this space a few months ago, after the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Government of Mexico v. Cargill, I suggested that American courts might decide the scope of judicial review of an investment treaty tribunal’s determination of its own jurisdiction by concluding that the parties’ agreement to resolve disputes by arbitration under the UNCITRAL Rules constitutes “clear and unmistakable evidence” of the treaty parties’ intent to have arbitrators decide jurisdiction issues with the same latitude that they decide the merits.  In a decision yesterday, the federal court of appeals in Washington D.C. appeared to…
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