An overview of our processes

Rent review disputes might not make headlines, but when they end up in arbitration — and then in the High Court — the details matter. A recent case involving a decision of one of NZDRC’s arbitrators, Catherine Green, is a good reminder of why getting the numbers right is so important.

Two similar cases. Two different jurisdictions. Two different outcomes. How did two courts in Hong Kong and Singapore reach such opposing conclusions on whether a mystery Chinese arbitration centre can be read into an agreement? The cases, while held in different common-law jurisdictions, saw arbitration clauses put under the microscope due to errors at the drafting stage. In both, the parties had attempted, and failed, to name an arbitration centre in China. Despite the commonalities, the courts treated the mistake in different ways. The clear unpredictability of these decisions shows why care and precision are needed when drafting arbitration agreements, and why periodically reviewing your nominated centre(s) might not be such a bad idea.

In Technip v MedGulf, the English High Court and Court of Appeal dismissed a construction contractor’s $25 million (USD) indemnity insurance claim for damage it caused when it crashed into the project developer’s property during construction works in an offshore oil field. Both courts preferred the insurer’s interpretation of the policy’s ambiguously worded exclusion clause, finding the policyholder’s interpretation made no commercial sense and did far more violence to the natural meaning of the words.