Headnote

Arbitration – Time limit for arbitration proceedings

Summary of facts

The Respondent successfully petitioned the Court of First Instance to appoint an arbitrator to resolve disputes between the Respondent and the two Petitioners, all of whom were parties to a commercial contract. The Court appointed the arbitrator on 13 February 1993. Arbitration proceedings commenced and continued until 5 October 1995, when the arbitrator rendered an award in favour of the Respondent against both Petitioners. The Respondent sought ratification of the award and the Court of First Instance ratified the award on 25 November 1995. The Petitioners appealed, but the Court of Appeal upheld the ratification on 17 April 1996.

The Petitioners raised a petition to cassation. The petition was based on three grounds, two of which were entirely fact-based (involving questions of the genuineness of the arbitration agreement and the authority of the signatories to the agreement) and were readily dismissed without notable legal analysis.

The third ground for the petition was that the arbitration award was invalid for having been issued after the expiry of the time limit for issuance of arbitral awards found in Article 210.1 of the Civil Procedure Code.

Held

The petition to cassation was dismissed.

The fact that the Petitioners had dealt with the arbitrator throughout a period exceeding two years as from the date of the first session indicates that the latter implicitly agreed to extend the first six-month period specified under Article 210 of the Civil Procedure Code.

Judgment

It was evidently established from the challenged judgment that the Petitioners had dealt with the arbitrator for more than two years as from the date of the first session. This indicates that the latter implicitly agreed to extend the first six-month period set for the award to be issued by the arbitrator under Article 210 of the Civil Procedure Code. In cases where the litigants do not agree on a specific date for such an extension, their consent as to the said extension shall be deemed an agreement to resume the arbitration with no definite date set. The period for issuing the award may be repeatedly extended for an additional six-month period until one of the litigants refuses any further renewal or turns to the courts to settle the action upon the expiry of the previous set period of arbitration.

Accordingly, the present petition to cassation is dismissed.