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UNITED STATES 1003
United States District Court, District of Columbia,
13 May 2020 and 24 August 2020
(PAO Tatneft v. Ukraine)
UNITED STATES 1003
In its first decision, the District Court denied the motion of Ukraine to file a supplemental briefing in support of its attempt to introduce a third ground for opposing confirmation of a French award rendered in favor of Tatneft, holding that Ukraine did not validly explain why it had failed to raise this defense when replying to the application to confirm the award. Further, this third ground, which was based on Art. V(1)(c) of the Convention, could not be deemed to be related to the Art. V(1)(d) ground that Ukraine had raised, as these defenses were predicated on different subsections of Art. V. By the second decision, the Court granted confirmation of the award, finding that the fact that the president of the arbitral tribunal had failed to disclose that he had been appointed by the law firm for the plaintiff as arbitrator in an unrelated arbitration before the award was rendered, in violation of the disclosure provisions in the UNCITRAL Rules, under which the arbitration had been conducted, did not constitute a ground for refusal of confirmation under Art. V(1)(d).
The court discusses the principle that the procedure for the enforcement of awards under the Convention is governed by the lex fori, as well as procedural issues (such as the competent enforcement court) not falling under the specific cases of ¶¶ 302-307.
The court discusses questions relating to the general approach taken by the Convention to the grounds for refusal of recognition and enforcement, including its pro-enforcement bias, as well as the system of the Convention, under which recognition and enforcement may only be denied on seven listed grounds and the petitioner has only the obligations set out in Art. IV.
Public policy: The court discusses the meaning of (international as compared to domestic) public policy, generally defined as the basic notions of morality and justice of the enforcement State.
Public policy: The court discusses the effect of other alleged violations of public policy on the recognition and enforcement of an arbitral award, such as contradictory reasons, manifest disregard of the law (US), etc.