Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 136

Summary: - An action to annul an arbitral award under Article 186 of the Law of Procedure. Confined to domestic arbitral awards. Its provisions do not extend to foreign arbitral awards. Rule: The annulment action provided for in Article 186 of the Law of Procedure is confined to challenges seeking annulment of domestic arbitral awards and has no bearing on foreign arbitral awards. The memorandum of understanding concluded on 13/12/2002 between the appellant, the respondent and others establishes that its thirteenth article provides that any dispute arising between its parties that cannot be settled amicably shall be referred to arbitration in Geneva, Switzerland, under the conciliation and arbitration rules in force at the International Chamber of Commerce, by three arbitrators appointed in accordance with the (icc) rules, and that the law applicable to the dispute is Swiss law. This means that the latter law governs the assessment of whether the arbitration agreement is void, rather than the law of the judge hearing the annulment action. Since the appellant did not invoke that law and did not submit the provisions of Swiss law concerning the capacity of the parties to the arbitration agreement, and the disputed arbitral award was issued pursuant to the aforementioned agreement and became final under the law of the country in which it was issued, and the appellant submitted nothing disproving this, it has res judicata effect as to the matters it decided. Consequently, what the appellant invoked and on which it based its action seeking annulment of the arbitration clause for lack of capacity of its signatories, on the ground that Kuwaiti law requires a special power of attorney to agree to arbitration, is, for the foregoing reasons, unsupported by law. Since the challenged judgment dismissed its action, it reached the correct result, and the challenge to it is unfounded.