Published on: 12 July 2023 at 14:00 IST
Court: Singapore International Commercial Court
Citation: CYW vs CYX (2023)
Hon’ble Singapore International Commercial Court has held that the court should accord a “Margin of Deference” to the Arbitral Tribunal in its exercise of procedural discretion. Deference is accorded in recognition of the fact that
- The tribunal possesses a wide discretion to determine the arbitral procedure, and
- That discretion is exercised within a highly specific and fact-intensive contextual milieu, the finer points of which the court may not be privy to.
It has therefore been said that the court ought not to micromanage the tribunal’s procedural decision-making and will instead give ‘substantial deference’ to procedural decisions of the tribunal.
Para 71 In China Machine New Energy Corp v Jaguar Energy Guatemala LLC and another [2020] 1 SLR 695 (“China Machine”), Sundaresh Menon CJ delivering the judgment of the court noted at [4] that many of the cases presented as due process violations typically concern the management of the particular arbitration which almost inevitably are matters that fall within the discretion of the tribunal. The present case is a good example of such a case.
As Menon CJ pointed out, when such decisions are subsequently challenged in court, it is essential that the court steers a course which holds two competing interests in balance: first, the need to robustly uphold what may properly be regarded as the parties’ due process rights; and second, the importance of preserving the proper limits of the tribunal’s discretion in dealing with the procedural details of the case it must decide. He pointed out at [97] that the parties’ right to be heard is implicitly limited by considerations of reasonableness and fairness and pointed out at [98] that in deciding whether a party has been denied the right to a fair hearing, the proper approach a court should take is to ask itself whether what the tribunal did (or decided not to do) falls within the range of what a reasonable and fair-minded tribunal might have done.
After emphasising at [102] that any alleged unfairness on which the complaining party seeks to found its claim of breach of natural justice must have been brought to the attention of the tribunal…..
Drafted By Abhijit Mishra
