UK 114

UK No. 114. Kabab-Ji S.A.L. (Lebanon) v. Kout Food Group (Kuwait), Court of Appeal, Case No. A4/2019/0944, 20 January 2020

The Court of Appeal confirmed the decision of the High Court to set aside an order enforcing an ICC award rendered in Paris. The Court agreed with the lower court that express choice of English law as the law governing the main agreement extended to the arbitration clause by virtue of the provision in the main agreement that it had to be “considered as a whole” Neither the choice for a Paris seat of arbitration nor the principle of the separability of the arbitration agreement did not change this conclusion. The latter simply ensuring that the chosen means of dispute resolution survived the main agreement becoming unenforceable; it did not preclude the arbitration agreement being construed with the remainder of the main agreement as a whole. The High Court had then correctly found that the respondent had not become a party to the main agreement and the arbitration agreement therein. The Court of Appeal held that having reached this conclusion, the High Court should have denied enforcement rather than adjourning the proceeding, as it did, for a possible further hearing after the determination of the annulment application which was pending against the award in France: the decision of the French court was not relevant to the questions of English law, particularly since that court would not apply Art. V(1)(a) of the 1958 New York Convention in determining the law of the arbitration agreement, but domestic French law.

Yearbook
Yearbook Commercial Arbitration, S. W. Schill (ed.), Vol. XLV (2020)

Country
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Original full text
Full text decision UK 114

Excerpt
Excerpt decision UK 114

Topics in UK 114
¶506 » Law applicable to the arbitration agreement
¶507 » Miscellaneous cases regarding the arbitration agreement

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