JUDGMENT

1 HIS HONOUR: The plaintiff (“LKT”) says that it and, among others, the defendant (“Mr Chun”) were parties to an “Equity Joint Venture Agreement” dated 1 August 1996 (“the agreement”). LKT says that it had claims against Mr Chun and other parties to the agreement; that those claims were validly referred to arbitration in Singapore pursuant to cl 29.2 of the agreement; and that the arbitrator, Mr Michael Hwang SC, made awards in its favour whereby Mr Chun is obliged to pay it substantial sums of money. LKT now seeks to enforce the awards pursuant to s 8(2) of the International Arbitration Act 1974 (Cth) (“the Act”).

The issues

2 Mr Chun said that there are four reasons why the awards should not be enforced against him:

(1) He was not a party to, or was not bound by, the agreement, so that there was no submission to arbitration binding upon him.

(2) He was wrongly named in the awards.

(3) He was not given proper notice of the appointment of the arbitrator or of the arbitration proceedings and was otherwise unable to present his case in the arbitration proceedings (s 8(5)(c) of the Act).

(4) The second, or final, award was invalid in so far as it purported to impose joint and several liability for the relevant amounts on him, because the nature of the liability had been settled by the first, or partial, award as joint liability only.