Editor's Choice: a new ICCA Awards Series upload

Subscribers to Kluwer Arbitration enjoy access to the ICCA Awards Series.

The first upload of materials from the newly launched ICCA Awards Series is now available on the Kluwer Arbitration database. It contains five unpublished awards rendered under the auspices of the SCC Arbitration Institute in 2022.

The arbitrators dealt with a variety of procedural and substantial issues ranging from the power of an arbitral tribunal to appoint experts to the interpretation of contractual terms, including in the case of clerical errors in contractual declarations, as well as the application of the United Nations Convention of Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). One award also included, as annex, a procedural order dealing with the parties’ requests for security for costs. Here are some of the highlights:

One rather peculiar case involved a loan agreement in respect of which the parties disputed whether the loan amount was agreed in US Dollars or Swedish Krona. The sole arbitrator determined that, even though the agreement stated the amount in Swedish Krona, the agreement was to be reinterpreted as referring to the amount in US Dollars. The arbitrator found that that was the currency that the lender had actually intended to indicate in the agreement, when instead, by mistake, it referred to the Swedish Krona, and that the borrower should have realized the lender’s mistake, since, as a result of previous dealings between the parties, the borrower owed to the lender precisely the US Dollar amount. 

In the same award, the arbitrator also held that the costs of the arbitration did not include the costs of an earlier related SCC emergency proceeding between the parties. Those costs had been awarded by the emergency arbitrator, and the issue was thus to be considered as finally settled within the emergency proceedings. 

Another case addressed the scope of application of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) to the supply of a medical product. The arbitral tribunal found that the CISG did not apply because the agreement did not cover the sale of specific goods, nor did it contain definite terms regarding the quantity of goods, which were indicated in separate purchase orders.

Finally, another case concerned the question of how to fill contractual gaps in a business partnership agreement. The sole arbitrator did so by referring to the intention and conduct of the parties, both at a precontractual and performance phase.