We've not been blogging for some time but the period of lull is over. In this post, we intend to bring to the readers a few developments in Indian arbitration law and provide link comments on those developments.
Raffles Design Intl. India Pvt. Ltd v. Educomp Professional Education (Del HC: Oct. 2016): Non-applicability of Section 26 of the Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015 to arbitration related court proceedings; whether Part I has been excluded?; Non-availability of relief under Section 9 to enforce orders of the arbitral tribunal; power of the court to award interim relief under S. 9 independent of the tribunal's orders; non-availability of relief under S. 27(5) (purportedly contempt) for disobedience of interim relief awarded by a Singapore seated arbitral tribunal.
Ayyasami v. Paramasivam (SC: Oct. 2016): Disputes involving fraud are non-arbitrable; But allegations of such fraud should not only be serious and in normal course constitute a criminal offence but also that they "are also complex in nature and the decision on these issues demand extensive evidence for which civil court should appear to be more appropriate forum than the Arbitral Tribunal." The court later held: "It is only in those cases where the Court, while dealing with Section 8 of the Act, finds that there are very serious allegations of fraud which make a virtual case of criminal offence or where allegations of fraud are so complicated that it becomes absolutely essential that such complex issues can be decided only by civil court on the appreciation of the voluminous evidence that needs to be produced, the Court can sidetrack the agreement by dismissing application under Section 8 and proceed with the suit on merits."
The blogger still thinks N Radhakrishnan is based on shaky foundations and is liable to be overruled. If at all disputes of the nature mentioned in Ayyasami have to be made non-arbitrable, it could be only for the purposes of bringing such disputes tainted by serious allegations of fraud to the public domain rather than deciding it in arbitration, which is private and confidential. Unfortunately, N. Radhakrishnan and Ayyasami are based on the misconceived basis that "the principle of common law that certain disputes which are of public nature, etc. are not capable of adjudication and settlement by arbitration and for resolution of such disputes, Courts, i.e. public for a, are better suited than a private forum of arbitration." This is totally misconceived considering that English law abandoned the legal position, as has been argued in this paper.
[Note: The links are just one of many comments on the topic and there is no particular reason for providing only those links and not others. Readers may please provide links to more comprehensive analyses in the comment section of this blog post.]
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