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Arbitration: 2021 in review

21 January 2022 / Donny Surtani
Issue: 7963 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice , ADR , Arbitration
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Reasons (for claimants) to be cheerful: Donny Surtani assesses the past year in international arbitration
  • The past 12 months have offered some positive developments for claimants in international arbitration cases, with key decisions providing greater certainty on governing law, enforcement and evasive debtors.

There have been some significant developments in (or relevant to) English law as it pertains to international arbitration in the past 12 months or so. In three key respects, the developments have been positive for claimants with strong claims that they wish to progress and monetise.

Greater certainty over governing law

Perhaps the most heralded decisions in English arbitration law in recent months were the Supreme Court’s rulings in Enka Insaat Ve Sanayi AS v OOO Insurance Company Chubb [2020] UKSC 38, [2020] All ER (D) 36 (Oct), and Kabab-Ji SAL (Lebanon) v Kout Food Group (Kuwait) [2021] UKSC 48, [2021] All ER (D) 89 (Oct).

Prior to these decisions, there had been some considerable uncertainty about how to ascertain the law governing an arbitration agreement

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NEWS
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
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