Philip Clifford QC, Hanna Roos & Eleanor Scogings track the nature & trends of two decades of arbitrator challenges
- An analysis of LCIA court and English court decisions on challenges to arbitrators between 1996 and 2017 reveals a robust and consistent approach.
The London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) recently published 32 anonymised summaries of arbitrator challenges decided by the LCIA during the period 2010 to 2017, supplementing the previous publication of 28 decisions from 1996 to 2010. When analysed together with applications to the English court to remove arbitrators brought between 1996 and 2017, it is evident that both the LCIA court and the English court have dealt with challenges robustly and consistently.
An overview
The majority of the challenge decisions reviewed were brought under Article 10.3 of the 1998 LCIA Arbitration Rules, on the ground that there were justifiable doubts as to the arbitrators’ independence or impartiality. However, there were also a significant number of challenges under Article 10.2, on the grounds that the arbitrators deliberately violated the arbitration agreement, failed to act fairly and impartially
