Decisions and Challenges After the Arbitral Proceedings - Hearing to Enforce/ Challenge Award - Act III, Scene III - WAMR 2009 Vol. 3, No. 3
Catherine A. Rogers, international arbitration and
professional ethics scholar, was welcomed as a professor of
law by Penn State Dickinson in July 2008. Professor Rogers
holds a joint appointment as a professor of law at Università
Commerciale Luigi Bocconi in Milan, Italy, and is the former
Richard C. Cadwallader Professor of Law at the Louisiana
State University Law Center. Professor Rogers’ scholarship
focuses on the convergence of the public and private in
international dispute resolution, specifically as manifest in the professional
obligations of the various participants in those processes. Her scholarship is
due to be published by Oxford University Press and Juris Publishing, and has
been published by the international law journals of Stanford, Michigan, and
Berkeley, as well as by several other national and foreign law reviews. She has
been an invited speaker at dozens of national and international conferences,
symposiums, and forums, including two Stanford-Yale Junior Faculty forums.
Professor Rogers is an associate reporter for the American Law Institute’s
Restatement of the Law of International Commercial Arbitration and the
recipient of the CPR Professional Article Award. She is a member of the
American Society of International Law Task Force on Global Legal Ethics, the
Academic Council of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration, and the
International Bar Association Task Force on Attorney Ethics in International
Arbitration. Before entering academia, Professor Rogers practiced
international litigation and arbitration in New York, Hong Kong, and San
Francisco. At Penn State Dickinson, Professor Rogers teaches International
Arbitration and Professional Responsibility.
Originally from World Arbitration And Mediation Review (WAMR)
Preview Page
20th Annual ITA Workshop
Confronting Ethical Issues in International Arbitration
June 18, 2009
ACT III
ACT III – DECISIONS AND CHALLENGES AFTER
THE ARBITRAL PROCEEDINGS
ACT III – SCENE III – HEARING TO ENFORCE/CHALLENGE AWARD
CATHERINE ROGERS: And with that, I will go ahead and invite up
the actors for Scene III, which I will say is the final act. This is
perhaps a setting with which we are all most familiar, and that is
the enforcement proceedings to enforce, or in the case of Fly-Buy
challenge, the enforcement of the award.
DEBORAH HANKINSON: Let me just say that our director was the
most competitive of the three and she insisted on costumes to see
if she could beat out the other two directors of the other scenes.
(Laughter)
The first case on today’s calendar is Cause No. 096438, Seller,
Inc. vs. Fly-Buy Airlines. The matter before the court is Seller’s
petition to confirm an arbitral award in accordance with Article
IV of the New York Convention. Fly-Buy opposes that petition
challenging the award under Articles 5.1(b) and 5.2(b) of the New
York Convention. Also pending is Seller’s Motion for Sanctions
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 based on some of Fly-
Buy’s allegations in its challenge to the award. Although normally
Seller would begin, Seller has satisfied its initial burden by
producing the original award and agreement. Accordingly, the
burden is on Fly-Buy to prove one of the grounds for denying
enforcement under Article V of the New York Convention. Since
the burden is on Fly-Buy, the court will hear first from counsel for
Fly-Buy. Counsel, you may begin.
JOHN TOWNSEND: May it please the court. My name is John
Townsend and I represent Fly-Buy Airlines, which challenges
enforcement of the award on multiple grounds, two of which I
propose to address with Your Honor. The first basis for the
challenge is that Fly-Buy requested that the arbitral tribunal