Insight: Fiona Trust & El Nasharty — The English Courts confirm their
pro-arbitration credentials
November 2007
Charles Balmain, Aloke Ray
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Recent commentary on the House of Lords's decision in Fiona Trust1 has suggested that the Lords delivered a ground-breaking decision with major implications for the arbitral process. While this was undoubtedly a robust judgment, a better view is that it marked the most recent development in a judicial trend of supporting arbitration, as evidenced by the fact that the judgment has already been enthusiastically applied by the High Court in El Nasharty2.
In Fiona Trust, the Lords confirmed, unanimously, that the English Courts will take an expansive approach to the construction of arbitration clauses. Going forward, the Courts will work from the presumption that, in the absence of clear wording to the contrary, parties who have included an arbitration clause in their commercial agreement intended to submit all disputes arising to arbitration.
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