Publications

Akten­widrige Fest­stel­lung ver­sus willkür­liche Beweiswürdi­gung,
Com­men­tary by Simon Gabriel on Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal deci­sion 4A_82/2016 on June 6, 2016

First, the present deci­sion offers, in par­tic­u­lar, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­sid­er the typ­i­cal sit­u­a­tions in which an arbi­tra­tion agree­ment may be extend­ed to third par­ties pur­suant to Swiss lex arbi­tri:

• If an assign­ment of a claim, an assump­tion of a debt or a trans­fer of a con­tract takes place (see Pub­lished Deci­sion of the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal no. 134 III 565, para. 3.2).

• If a third par­ty inten­tion­al­ly inter­feres with the per­for­mance of a con­tract in full knowl­edge of the fact that this con­tract con­tains an arbi­tra­tion agree­ment (see Pub­lished Deci­sion of the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal no. 134 III 565, para. 3.2).

• If a con­tract for the ben­e­fit of a third par­ty is con­clud­ed (unless oth­er­wise stat­ed in the arbi­tra­tion agree­ment itself; see deci­sion of the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal no. 4A_44/2011, para. 2.4.1).

Sec­ond, the Swiss Fed­er­al Tri­bunal found in the present (nation­al) case that a poten­tial­ly arbi­trary assess­ment of evi­dence was not a suf­fi­cient rea­son for set­ting aside an arbi­tral award. Only if the arbi­tral tri­bunal had mis­rep­re­sent­ed the con­tent of doc­u­ments, the arbi­tral award might have been set aside. This was, how­ev­er, not the case.