Recent Posts

Well, somebody in Arbitration World has to write about a subject other than Section 1782, so here we go…. The US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, after nearly 25 years of living on the dark side of international arbitration, seems prepared to confess its sins and seek redemption. It appears poised to recognize that the New York Convention provides the limited grounds for a US court to refuse recognition and enforcement of an international arbitration award made at a US arbitral seat, but that US domestic arbitration law (especially Chapter 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act) supplies the grounds for…
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… and to be able to talk about it. You can copy/paste this link into your browser, to open and read it. I tried it. It works. https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2022/2022onsc1900/2022onsc1900.html

I was bundled in my favorite leather coat last week, having an outdoor lunch and braving the late April snow flurries with an arbitrator friend, who began to tell me not about a case he had, but about a case he dreamed he had. It was a bad dream, he said, and it went something like this: “So in my dream I get appointed to chair what looks like a pretty simple non-payment case except that Claimant is a Company in Haiti, of all places, and the Respondent is like a Haitian government agency. And the really odd thing is…
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No I did not retire. And I didn’t have long Covid, or any Covid. I just had stuff to do. Mostly stuff I can’t tell you about. Confidentiality, tender egos, taciturn Tribunals, all that. It’s better to be quiet. But seriously, readers, if you really like this Blog and crave regular Blog posts with your morning coffee, just stop sending me arbitral appointments, or stop making motions in my pending cases, and then I will have enough time to do what I am meant to do, which is to entertain you. To make you smile. Which we all need to…
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Some people just won’t admit that they read this Blog. The judges of the Ninth Circuit, for example. When last read by many of you, in February 2021 (sorry for the long silence; I’ve had to work), your Commentator reported on a decision in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in which the panel majority, despite a persuasive dissent, held that the law governing the arbitrability of US federal trademark claims, when contested in a US court whose jurisdiction is based on those federal claims, and contested between a non-signatory and signatory, each of Indian nationality, of an arbitration…
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This Commentary begins, innocently, with a report of a new decision in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, about choice of law in the arbitrability realm. I realize you are watching lot of daytime TV these days. The Edge of Night, etc. So I will try to make it interesting. Settle in, remove your mask, stay awhile. This story actually begins with the Outokumpu case. You remember Outokumpu, from last June. It is famous for a few reasons. One is that Justice Thomas wrote the opinion for a unanimous US Supreme Court. How often has that happened in 30…
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