Complex - Multicontract-Multiparty - Arbitrations

The Purpose of this article is to analyze the substantive and procedural legal problems encountered by parties and arbitrators in multicontract-multiparty arbitrations.1 More often than not these difficulties are caused by a lack of coordination between the arbitration or jurisdiction clauses which are inserted in each of the agreements of the contractual chain. When a dispute arises it may happen that the plaintiff or potential plaintiffs are not in a position to bring the various desired defendants to one single arbitration proceeding. The same problem is encountered when a defendant or defendants want to add to the proceedings another party to the economic transaction. Such will be the case, for example, if out of the three contracts which make the contractual chain, one includes an arbitration clause and the two others include jurisdiction clauses giving jurisdiction to different courts; or alternatively, if the three contracts contain different arbitration clauses...