Arbitration Clause in UK Law

The parties have entered into a relationship, an agreement or what is alleged to be an agreement or what appears on its face to be an agreement, which may give rise to disputes. They want those disputes decided by a tribunal which they have chosen, commonly on the grounds of such matters as its neutrality, expertise and privacy, the availability of legal services at the seat of the arbitration and the unobtrusive efficiency of its supervisory law.

If, as appears to be generally accepted, there is no rational basis upon which businessmen would be likely to wish to have questions of the validity or enforceability of the contract decided by one tribunal and questions about its performance decided by another, one would need to find very clear language before deciding that they must have had such an intention.

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.

These authorities confirm that the rights which the Insurance Company has acquired are rights which are subject to the arbitration clause. Likewise, the Insurance Company is not entitled to assert its claim inconsistently with the terms of the contract. One of the terms of the contract is that, in the event of dispute, the claim must be referred to arbitration. The Insurance Company is not entitled to enforce its right without also recognising the obligation to arbitrate.

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.

A search for an implied choice of proper law to govern the arbitration agreement is therefore likely (as the dicta in the earlier cases indicate) to lead to the conclusion that the parties intended the arbitration agreement to be governed by the same system of law as the substantive contract, unless there are other factors present which point to a different conclusion.

It is said to be wrong to allow a party to a contract who has refused to perform his obligations under it at the same time to insist on the observance of a clause of arbitration embodied in the contract. The doctrine of approbate and reprobate is said to forbid this. I appreciate the apparent dilemma but with the greatest respect I venture to think it is based on a misapprehension. In all this I have assumed that the arbitration clause in its terms is wide enough to cover the dispute.