Court remits LCIA award to tribunal on successful AA 1996, s 68 serious irregularity challenge on three grounds (K and others v P and others)

Article summary

Arbitration analysis: Sir Jeremy Cooke, sitting as a High Court judge, upheld a challenge to an award of a three member tribunal in a London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) arbitration, remitting the award to the tribunal. The challenge was brought under the Arbitration Act 1996 (AA 1996), section 68, and was based on serious irregularity by the tribunal in failing to act fairly and in failing to deal with all the issues that were put before it. There were four areas of dispute to which the complaints related and the court found that the challenge succeeded in respect of three of them. Proceedings in the arbitration had closed two years before the award was issued, a delay which the court held to be ‘inordinate and unacceptable.’ Reasons relating to the illness of one arbitrator might account in part for that delay but also perhaps for ‘an...