Arbitration Law in UK Law

But where a question of construction is the very thing referred for arbitration, then the decision of the arbitrator upon that point cannot be set aside by the Court only because the Court would itself have come to a different conclusion.

But leave should not be given even in such a case, unless the judge considered that a strong prima facie case had been made out that the arbitrator had been wrong in his construction; and when the events to which the standard clause fell to be applied in the particular arbitration were themselves "one-off" events, stricter criteria should be applied on the same lines as those that I have suggested as appropriate to "one-off" clauses.

It is only too easy in a complex case for a party who is dissatisfied with the decision of an adjudicator to comb through the adjudicator's reasons and identify points upon which to present a challenge under the labels "excess of jurisdiction" or "breach of natural justice". The time constraints within which he is expected to operate are proof of that. The need to have the "right" answer has been subordinated to the need to have an answer quickly.

To seek to challenge the adjudicator's decision on the ground that he has exceeded his jurisdiction or breached the rules of natural justice (save in the plainest cases) is likely to lead to a substantial waste of time and expense—as, we suspect, the costs incurred in the present case will demonstrate only too clearly.

In my judgment, where an injunction is sought to restrain a party from proceeding in a foreign court in breach of an arbitration agreement governed by English law, the English Court need feel no diffidence in granting the injunction, provided that it is sought promptly and before the foreign proceedings are too far advanced.

In my opinion the construction of an arbitration clause should start from the assumption that the parties, as rational businessmen, are likely to have intended any dispute arising out of the relationship into which they have entered or purported to enter to be decided by the same tribunal. The clause should be construed in accordance with this presumption unless the language makes it clear that certain questions were intended to be excluded from the arbitrator's jurisdiction.