Arbitration is an alternative method, in which the parties to a dispute consent to present their positions in front of an arbitrator, who is an objective third party, with the aim of him ruling on the dispute, without the parties having any ability to appeal; as part of the considerations for possible ways of acting, the firm considers and recommends, if possible, settling disputes by alternative means, in order to save its clients costs and harm to the commercial interests that might be caused by a long, heavily publicized process in court.
The arbitrator is duty-bound to be objective and to rule in the dispute before him, and to give an impartial judgment. Furthermore, the arbitrator is entitled to accept the position of one party in its entirety, to charge the full sum of the claim or to reject the claim out of hand, and in this respect the arbitrator is similar to a judge.
As opposed to the mediation process, which is entirely voluntary, and conditional upon the good will of the parties, there are many cases in which arbitration is forced onto a party who does not want it, by virtue of a contract that it signed in the past; however, in comparison to a court case, it can be said that the parties have greater control in the selection of the person that will settle their dispute, in that they can themselves select the arbitrator, which is not possible when submitting a claim to the court, where the judge for a specific case is selected by the court secretariat.
Please contact our office for further details.
