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- UNITED STATES 27 January 2025 Baker Hugues
UNITED STATES 27 January 2025 Baker Hugues
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, 27 January 2025
(Baker Hugues Saudi Arabia Company Limited v. Dynamic Industries, Incorporated, et al.)
UNITED STATES 27 January 2025 Baker Hugues
The district court had refused to compel arbitration of a dispute, finding that the parties’ contract provided for arbitration at Dubai’s DIFC-LCIA, which had been abolished in 2021. The Court of Appeals reversed. It noted that the DIFC-LCIA had been replaced by a functionally identical successor, the DIAC, but concluded that it need not decide whether the agreed forum remained available, because the forum-selection clause designating the DIFC-LCIA was not integral to the contract of the parties, whose dominant purpose was to arbitrate generally.
The court discusses how to interpret the Convention’s requirement that the agreement is not null and void etc., as well as specific cases of invalidity: e.g., lack of consent (misrepresentation, duress, or fraud), vague wording of the arbitral clause; other terms of the contract contradict the intention to arbitrate, etc.