Janna Purdie considers the “substantial injustice” requirement for a successful challenge under s 68 of the Arbitration Act 1996.
There are very few successful challenges to arbitral awards under s 68 of the Arbitration Act 1996 (AA 1996), due to the requirement that a party must show it suffered substantial injustice due to the serious irregularity.
However, the end of last year saw two such successful challenges in the Commercial Court. The cases are of interest to arbitration practitioners as they provide a clear review of existing case law and a useful insight into what courts consider amounts to substantial injustice.
The serious irregularity cases
The Imtech case
The case concerned an electrical contract. The arbitration hearing was highly complex and involved substantial pleadings and evidence. However, the award itself was very short and stated that: “The parties’ submissions and the evidence and documents provided to support the parties’ cases are extensive in the extreme and for us to address each and every point raised by the parties would be impracticable and therefore we have confined our reasons to the essentials only.”
The
