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Contact with chambers should be made through the Practice Management Team. They are happy to discuss client requirements and provide further information on such matters as the expertise and experience of individual members, fees, working practices and languages spoken. We have members able to work in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Chinese (Mandarin).

Outside working hours, a member of our team is always available to be contacted on matters of an urgent nature. Contact should be made using the Chambers main number or email.

For our Singapore office, for client enquiries please contact our BD Director, Asia Pacific, Lara Quie and for all other queries please contact Lynn Quek. Out of office hours calls will automatically be diverted to our clerking team in London.

London

20 Essex Street
London
WC2R 3AL

enquiries@twentyessex.com
t: +44 20 7842 1200

Singapore

28 Maxwell Road
#02-03 Maxwell Chambers Suites
Singapore 069120

singapore@twentyessex.com
t: +65 62257230

Contact

Contact with chambers should be made through the Practice Management Team. They are happy to discuss client requirements and provide further information on such matters as the expertise and experience of individual members, fees, working practices and languages spoken. We have members able to work in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Chinese (Mandarin).

Outside working hours, a member of our team is always available to be contacted on matters of an urgent nature. Contact should be made using the Chambers main number or email.

For our Singapore office, for client enquiries please contact our BD Director, Asia Pacific, Lara Quie and for all other queries please contact Lynn Quek. Out of office hours calls will automatically be diverted to our clerking team in London.

London

20 Essex Street
London
WC2R 3AL

enquiries@twentyessex.com
t: +44 20 7842 1200

Singapore

28 Maxwell Road
#02-03 Maxwell Chambers Suites
Singapore 069120

singapore@twentyessex.com
t: +65 62257230

30/01/2015

Sierra Fishing Company and others v Dr Hasan Said

This is an archived article, and some links may not work. Contact us if you have any questions.

In this case the Claimants applied under s.24(1)(a) of the Arbitration Act 1996 to remove an arbitrator on the grounds that circumstances existed giving rise to justifiable doubts as to his impartiality.  Those grounds included the fact that the arbitrator had close personal and business connections with the Defendants, that he had assisted in (and advised the Defendants in relation to) the drafting of the very agreements which were the subject of the arbitration, and that the way in which the arbitrator had conducted the reference suggested that he may be partisan and had become too personally involved in the dispute to retain the necessary objectivity. 

The application was successful, Popplewell J accepting the Claimants’ submission that the ‘fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased’, applying Porter v Magill [2002] AC 357, and rejecting the Defendants’ submission that the Claimants had waived the right to object under s.73 of the Arbitration Act 1996 by taking part in the arbitration without making an objection forthwith.  In relation to the second of these points, the judgment of Popplewell J contains a helpful clarification of what counts as “taking part” in an arbitration for the purposes of s.73. 

Luke Pearce appeared on behalf of the Claimants (instructed by Holman Fenwick Willan). 


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