Recent Posts

The functus officio doctrine returned to center stage this week, with a new decision in a New York Convention case from the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Here, a partial award determined that a contract had been breached, but the subsequent final award determined that the same contract was unenforceable. In the circumstances, the Court held, the final award was enforceable and confirmation of the partial award could be (and properly was) refused under the Convention by the district court. (AO Techsnabexport v. Globe Nuclear Servs. & Supply, Inc., 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 25640 (4th Cir. Dec. 15, 2010))….
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The efforts of Chevron Corporation to obtain evidence under 28 U.S.C. § 1782 for use in litigation in Ecuador’s courts  and in a BIT arbitration against the Government of Ecuador has given U.S. District courts in a number of jurisdictions the opportunity to consider the discretionary factors affecting the availability of section 1782 discovery. Such discretionary factors were identified by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Intel case. (Intel Corp. v. Advanced Microdevices, Inc., 542 U.S. 241 (2004)).   Chevron is the defendant in private environmental litigation in Ecuador, and contends that the Government of Ecuador has improperly colluded with…
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Observers of the relationship between the New York Convention and U.S. bankruptcy proceedings will take interest in a recent decision of a federal district court in Pittsburgh, in which the Court rejected the bankruptcy trustee’s attempt to collaterally attack an ICC arbitration award and the judgment entered on that award. G&G Investments, Inc. v. Buschmeier, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 125902 (W.D. Pa. Nov. 30, 2010).   The bankruptcy debtor in G&G Investments had: contracted to purchase a controlling interest in a German company; attempted to rescind and recover its initial payment; and then lost an ICC arbitration in which it was…
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The decision earlier this week of the UK Supreme Court, that facts disclosed in confidential settlement discussions are admissible to interpret the settlement agreement achieved (Oceanbulk Shipping & Trading SA v. TMT Asia Ltd. & Ors, [2010] UKSC 44 (27 October 2010)), may contribute in a useful way to current discussions about ethical rules of conduct for counsel in international arbitrations. The decision is useful to the debate over arbitration counsel ethics, because it re-focuses our attention on the reasons for what is known in the UK as the “without prejudice” rule. That rule, as the decision reminds us, is…
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Just when you thought the day would never return when a U.S. court would actually show deference to a foreign arbitral tribunal on an issue of that tribunal’s jurisdiction, along comes a new decision of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, holding that an appeal before it on such a jurisdiction issue was moot – moot – because the ICC arbitral tribunal in Paris had ruled upon the issue in a partial award during the pendency of the appeal.  (Invista S.A.R.L. v. Rhodia SA, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 21950 (3d Cir. Oct, 25, 2010)). The Invista case…
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Under compétence-compétence, American style, nothing may be arbitrated if there never was a contract. We were reminded of this last week, when a federal judge in Manhattan (i) denied a motion to compel arbitration, and (ii) refused to stay its own proceedings pending the decision of an ICC arbitral tribunal in London on the contested issue of the existence of a contract containing an agreement to arbitrate. (Dedon Gmbh v. Janus Et Cie, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 112131 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 19, 2010).   In Dedon, the parties either did or did not enter into an exclusive distribution agreement. If they…
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