LISBON ARBITRATION

The current pandemic, caused by SARS CoV-2 and COVID-19 (“ COVID-19 pandemic ” or “ pandemic ”), has had, and will likely continue to have, in the coming months, a very significant impact on several social and economic sectors, in particular, on the justice sector and on the activity of state courts and individuals that provide services in this sector, including lawyers, judges and arbitrators, as well as other entities, such as arbitral institutions. As regards arbitration in particu...

On 5 November 2019, the Macau Official Gazette announced the publication of Law no. 19/2019, the new arbitration law of the Macau SAR (“New Arbitration Law”). This legislation will come into force on 4 May 2020. The full text of the legislation can be found here . The New Arbitration Law replaces the current regime set out more than 20 years ago and introduces important amendments to the arbitration legal framework of Macau. The key changes in the New Arbitration Law include: 1. One sin...

It is widely accepted in the international arbitration community that arbitral tribunals may draw adverse inferences from a party’s failure to produce a document requested in the proceedings. As an example of that, the IBA Rules on the Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration (“IBA Rules”) specifically recognize this possibility in Article 9.5. In this context, an adverse inference can be described as the presumption that an unproduced document is unfavourable to the interests of the p...

Technology advances of the last decade have irreversibly changed the way we communicate, and international arbitration is no exception to this new reality. Although some of the possibilities allowed by the use of new technologies, such as virtual hearing rooms and the use of highly hyperlinked submissions, may still not be standard at this point – and, most importantly, may not suit or be cost-effective in all kinds of arbitral procedures –, it is already common practice between arb...

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has recently revised its Note to Parties and Arbitral Tribunals on the Conduct of the Arbitration under the ICC Rules of Arbitration (“Note”). The Note provides the users of ICC arbitration (including parties, arbitral tribunals and administrative secretaries) with useful, practical guidance on the conduct of arbitrations under the ICC Rules of Arbitration (last amended in 2017). Importantly, the new version of the Note applies to “all ICC a...

1.   Technological Wave Around 20 years ago, Richard Susskind predicted that lawyers would regularly use e-mails to communicate with clients [1] . Time proved him right. Thereafter, 10 years ago, the same author predicted that “the foundations of dispute resolution [would] be rocked by a combination of electronic disclosure, e-filing in the courts” [2] . Once again, time proved him right. He now predicts that new technologies are one of the main drivers of a big transformation in the lega...

According to most laws and regulations regarding arbitration, the parties may freely agree on the rules governing the proceedings and, in the absence of such agreement, the arbitral tribunal defines and conducts the arbitral proceedings under the rules that it considers appropriate [1] . The arbitral tribunal has, typically, broad discretion and room for flexibility when conducting the arbitral proceedings, within certain limits: firstly, the boundaries arising from the agreement of the...

After three years of debate, on 26 June 2018, in its 51 st annual session held in New York, Uncitral approved final drafts for a Convention on the Enforcement of Mediation Settlement Agreements (hereinafter “the Singapore Mediation Convention”) and for a Model Law on International Commercial Mediation and International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (hereinafter “the Mediation Model Law”). These drafts will be submitted to the Commission for adoption by the end of 2018 and onl...

Among other reputed arbitral institutions, Delos Dispute Resolution was founded back in 2014, and was introduced as an arbitral institution devoted to respond to the needs of businesses globally for time and cost efficiency in the resolution of disputes through arbitration. Considering that the seat of the arbitration is one of the most consequential aspects of this particular dispute resolution method, Delos intended to provide its users the information and tools necessary for a conscious...

Lisbon Arbitration was born with the ambition of being a major project for Morais Leitão, Galvão Teles, Soares da Silva e Associados (Morais Leitão), but also with the ambition of being yet another cog in the wheel of affirming Lisbon as one of the capitals of international arbitration. Recently, when negotiating an arbitration agreement, one of the largest companies of the Portuguese-speaking countries outside of Europe proposed to its North American counterpart that the seat of ar...

Mozambique has been witnessing a number of high-profile investments instrumental to the development of the country’s very significant natural resources, particularly coal and natural gas. The Nacala Corridor Railway and Port Project, sponsored by Brazilian mining company Vale to export coal from the Moatize coal mines, and the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Projects in the Rovuma Basin in the north of the country, by Anadarko and Eni/Exxon Mobil, deserve a special mention, even if at different s...

1. Due to the fact that the 2011 Portuguese Arbitration Law (2011 PAL) has not provided – contrary to what the 1986 Portuguese Arbitration Law (1986 PAL) had done, in its Article 27(3) – on the manner how to handle, cumulatively, the annulment request of the arbitral award before the State courts and an appeal lodged against it (in cases where the parties had reserved in their arbitration agreement, the latter right of appeal), it is debated among Portuguese legal commentators how the int...