Speaker: Professor Lawrence Boo
Chair: Dinesh Dillon, Partner at Allen and Gledhill
Professor Lawrence Boo is in his 4th year of doing a lecture for SIARB discussing judicial decisions of Singapore courts.
In a yet another well-attended and lively discussion, Professor Boo provided his analysis on arbitration-related cases that came out in the year 2015. He spent more time on cases arising out of two stages of the arbitral proceedings most commonly besieged with issues that would seek judicial assistance, a) enforcement of arbitration agreements vis-à-vis stay of court applications, and b) setting aside an award. There have been 7 occasions where Singapore courts had been asked to stay court proceedings in favour of arbitration and 9 cases for it to set aside arbitral awards.
One case was highlighted showing a party’s novel attempt of seeking the setting aside of an award due to the tribunal’s failure to declare closure of proceedings under the SIAC Rules. This then served as a springboard for exchange of ideas with the participants on how to curb obvious unmeritorious setting aside applications. One suggested course of action was for Singapore courts to provide for payment of indemnity costs, which is being done by Hong Kong courts.
Chaired by Mr Dinesh Dillon of Allen and Gledhill, Professor Boo’s presentation and the discussion that followed showed the gap that Singapore courts had not yet had the opportunity to close in, i.e. what defines “egregious” or how “egregious” should an error be in an arbitral award in order to merit setting aside of such award by the courts. Guidance on this may protect the courts from setting aside applications hinged on what could obviously be deemed as baseless and unmeritorious grounds.
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Reported by:
EARL J RIVERA- DOLERA, The Arbitration Chambers