Notes from NYU’s Forum on the Chevron-Ecuador dispute
As Roger Alford mentioned previously, New York University Law School hosted a discussion of the Chevron-Ecuador dispute on October 24th.
The event was subject to the Chatham House rules, so my notes below should not be attributed to any particular panelist or audience members. However, in the case of moderator Michael Goldhaber, his views have been publicized in his magazine columns, one of which is referenced below. (Roger intends to blog about his own talk, so I’ll leave him to weigh in further in this space).
In no particular order, here a couple things that caught my ear at the NYU event:
• Until recently, arbitrators had been able to ride in the slipstream of the U.S. Courts, to bo [...]
The Pyramid Enforcement Scheme
Recent reports of the freezing of Russian government funds at the Stockholm Arbitration Institute may be premature, but it still remains possible that a Swedish bailiff could move to seize such funds.
At the time of this writing, a freezing request by German businessman Franz Sedelmayer remained under active review at a Swedish government debt enforcement agency.
Mr. Sedelmayer, you may recall, is the bearer of a real collector’s item: a vintage 1998 arbitral award in which the Russian Federation was ordered to pay some $2.35 Million (US) for helping itself to the German businessman’s St. Petersburg-based private security company.
Since 1998, Mr. Sedelmayer has made a second career out o [...]
CAFTA Labour Arbitration Should Play Out on Fast Track
If you’ve been watching the headlines this month, you may have noticed that the United States of America has launched a novel arbitration against the Republic of Guatemala.
The claim alleges that Guatemala is failing to enforce its own labour laws, thus falling afoul of international legal obligations written into the U.S. Free Trade Agreement with Central America and the Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR).
While there have been a handful of arbitration claims brought under the CAFTA-DR’s investor-state dispute process, the U.S.-Guatemala proceeding is apparently the first state-to-state claim to be brought pursuant to Chapter 20 of the same agreement.
Those familiar with the rather leisure [...]
Your Next Nominee?
As a journalist, I miss out on all the fun of nominating arbitrators.
And I also refrain from counseling others as to whom they should nominate to arbitral tribunals.
But, today I’d like to make an exception.
Recently, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe engineered the effective demise of the regional tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). These depressing developments have been chronicled in my Investment Arbitration Reporter newsletter, and you can find more background here.
While members of the international arbitration community should be decrying this move to kick the legs out from under an international tribunal, they might also reflect that a small group of i [...]
Moral Damages in Investment Arbitration
As has been chronicled in previous postings, the 2008 decision of an ICSID arbitral tribunal to award $1 Million (US) in “moral damages” to an injured company has been eyed covetously by other investor-claimants in investment treaty disputes.
Such sums may be “small change” compared to the more conventional forms of economic compensation claimed for treaty breaches. Still, it’s become de rigeur for claimants – and even some states – to tack on claims for a few million Dollars in moral damages.
Arbitrators have been slower to award moral damages. However, in a recently-concluded ICSID arbitration proceeding, a tribunal grappled at considerable length with the claimant’s $3Milli [...]
10 Investor-State Awards I Had Hoped to Read in 2010
Last year, around this time, I offered a list of 10 investor-state arbitral awards I hoped to see in 2010.
If time permits, I may do another list for 2011. But, first I thought I’d take a look back at last year’s list and offer a brief update on those cases. Rather, than do all of the heavy-lifting here, I’ll direct readers of this blog to relevant reporting in my Investment Arbitration Reporter newsletter (not to be confused with Kluwer’s ITA newsletter) where appropriate. (You won’t need a subscription to view the articles that are referenced below, as we’ll make them publicly available.)
Without further ado, here’s a run-down of the ten cases from last year.
Suez, Vivendi, Ang [...]
