Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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The English Supreme Court recently managed to produce an impeccably reasoned and utterly wrong decision on arbitration and the law applicable to the arbitral agreement.

This decision, Kabab-Ji SAL (Lebanon) v. Kout Food Group (Kuwait), [2021] UKSC 48 (available at https://bit.ly/3pdjgM8) involved the English courts refusing to enforce an award rendered in France which the Cour d’appel de Paris refused to set aside ([2020] Rev. Arb. 925) (available at https://bit.ly/3EuPMzy).

The English Supreme Court ruled that the parties’ choice of English law to govern the contract applied to the arbitration clause as well and, under English law, the only respondent to the arbitration was never a party to the agreement to arbitrate. This was despite the parties’ choice of Paris as the seat.