Uganda court reaffirms res judicata effect of earlier arbitral award and declines to intervene in arbitrator’s decision (China Railway 18th Bureau (Group) Co Ltd v Tumo Technical Services Ltd)
Arbitration analysis: The court dismissed a challenge to a Uganda-seated award premised on a public policy ground that the award dealt with a claim (recovery of contractual retention) that was res judicata having been determined in a prior arbitration. Dismissing the challenge, the court held that it was prohibited by the Arbitration Act, c. 5 (a Model Law statute) from reviewing the correctness of the arbitrator’s decision on the res judicata objection except upon a showing that the decision was perverse or based on wrong propositions of law, which the applicant failed to demonstrate. The court’s reasoning also indicates that (in relation at least to Uganda-seated arbitration), the applicable res judicata test is the same as that which ordinarily applies in litigation under section 7 of the Civil Procedure Act, c. 282, ie, that the claim or issue was already heard and finally decided by a competent court/tribunal in a prior dispute in which the same claim or issue was also directly and substantially in issue between the same parties or parties under whom they claim, litigating under the same title. The court also rejected a bare, unsubstantiated claim of evident partiality or bias, as well as an allegation of computational error in the award that ought to have been raised before the arbitrator in a timely request for correction of the award. Written by Hussein D. Gulam, MCIArb, associate at MMAKS Advocates.