Recent Posts

The Supreme Court’s decision today in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. Animalfeeds International Inc., No. 08-1198, slip op., April 27, 2010, ends months of speculation about whether the Court would clarify the status of the “manifest disregard” disregard doctrine. The District Court in Stolt-Nielsen had relied upon the manifest disregard doctrine, before the Hall Street case, in deciding to vacate the arbitration panel’s decision in favor of class arbitration. The Second Circuit in Stolt-Nielsen held, after Hall Street, that the doctrine survives as a “judicial gloss” on Section 10(a)(4) of the FAA, i.e. as a description of the circumstances in which an…
Read More »

The Supreme Court of the United States today held that arbitrators exceed their powers under the Federal Arbitration Act when they impose class arbitration on parties that have not expressly agreed to class arbitration. The Court reversed a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which held that the parties’ agreement to class action arbitration may be Inferred when their agreement is silent on the matter. Such inference, the Court held today, is “fundamentally at war with the foundational FAA principle that arbitration is a matter of consent. The Court divided 5-3. Justice Alito wrote the…
Read More »

Former Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld last week failed to convince a federal district judge in New York to enjoin a FINRA arbitration against him arising from a Lehman bond sale in 2006. In this latest of several court decisions concerning arbitrability of pending FINRA arbitrations, Lehman’s erstwhile leader moved to enjoin the arbitration after the panel had denied his motion to dismiss. As to six of the seven claims, the court denied the motion to enjoin the arbitration — but only after accepting that the question was properly one for judicial determination. (Fuld v. Booth Foundation, Inc., 2010 U.S….
Read More »

Ecuador’s violation of what I have called the “Effective Means” Clause of the US-Ecuador BIT (Art. II(7)) meant that Chevron-Texaco was entitled to recover the damages, if any, proximately caused by the non-adjudication of its breach of contract claims in the courts of Ecuador for an unreasonably long period of time. The teams of American counsel squared off against one another could readily agree that the venerable Chorzow Factory case provided the classical formulation of the measure of damages for breach of an obligation imposed by international law: in a phrase, “restitutio in integrum.” Applying the standard of putting the…
Read More »

Dear Readers My general website carries a commentary on an important new decision of the federal district court in Manhattan permitting attachment and execution against funds of the Argentine Central Bank at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, to satisfy bondholders’ judgments against the Republic of Argentina. Click through to my general website at the bottom of this window. Kind regards. Marc Goldstein

Readers of Arbitration Commentaries may generally rely upon its principal author to read cases from beginning to end before reporting upon them in this corner of Cyberspace. But whereas the Arbitral Tribunal in Chevron-Texaco v. Republic of Ecuador has seen fit to deliver a Partial Award on the Merits that runs to 265 pages, it is hoped that you will gratefully receive this interim report (based upon reading up to page 134 of the Partial Award) together with a promise that there will be more to come.( Here is a link to the full text of the Partial Award: http://ita.law.uvic.ca/documents/ChevronTexacoEcuadorPartialAward.PDF)…
Read More »