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ANNOUNCEMENT(S)

15 February 2024

Thank you June and Intellitrain, welcome CMA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Lunar New Year to all of our fellows, members, colleagues and friends of the SIArb who celebrate. 

May the Year of the Dragon bring you joy, success, good health and abundance! 

The Lunar New Year is customarily a time for reunions with loved ones, to give thanks and to celebrate new beginnings.  In this connection, this season marks a time of thanksgiving and transition for SIArb as we onboard a new secretariat team following the retirement of Intellitrain as SIArb's secretariat services provider. 

As a volunteer led organisation with an extremely busy annual programme, SIArb has been fortunate to have had the support of June Tan and her fantastic team at Intellitrain over the past decade.  Intellitrain has contributed as a true stakeholder of SIArb, seeing through milestone after milestone, including our 40th anniversary Gala Dinner in 2022, digitalising and taking our Fellowship and International Entry Courses to the next level during the unprecedented pandemic years, launching the Singapore Arbitration Journal and not least organising innumerable successful lectures, symposia, seminars and social events that our members and friends have enjoyed year after year.  Despite a challenging handover years ago, Intellitrain leaves SIArb on strong foundations with three consecutive years of growth and a solid financial position.

In these respects, June and her team over the years (including Joy, Lynn, Cheryl, Linh, Daphne, Shandy, Keerthi, Gabriel and others who have worked behind the scenes) will always be fondly remembered as part of the SIArb family.

June Tan collage

On behalf of SIArb, Council wishes to convey our utmost gratitude to June and her team (present and past) for their contributions to SIArb’s development and evolution.  Many of our members will have interacted with June at some point and we will all miss her. 

Sadly, the time has come to bid farewell to Intellitrain as secretariat, but we will continue to count them as friends and look forward to welcoming June and her team as special guests of SIArb on future occasions. 

Effective 15 February 2024, directors Allison Law and Beatrice Goh and their team at CMA International Consultants will be taking over in providing secretariat services for SIArb.  CMA was founded in 1995 and has over 25 years of experience in providing secretariat services to professionals-led associations as well as conference and event management.  Their contact details will be published on SIArb's website and LinkedIn page.  The new SIArb enquiries hotline will be +65 6336 4970.

2024 got off to a cracking start with two CPD events already, including the ever popular annual 'Developments in Singapore Arbitration' hybrid seminar by Professor Lawrence Boo and Delphine Ho, which again attracted over 100 registrations in Singapore and abroad. 

Given the transition in the secretariat team, Council foresees that we are likely to have to moderate the number of events organised by SIArb in the initial few months.  Thank you in advance for your understanding and patience as we welcome CMA to the SIArb family.  Our priority is to ensure a smooth transition so that our governance and cornerstone activities, in particular our membership and fellowship courses, will not be impacted.  We plan to pick up the pace of events again later in the year and will continue to hold our flagship events such as the SIArb Lecture, Annual Symposium and Annual Dinner.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to me or any of the Council Members.  

Thank you and I look forward to seeing everyone at our upcoming events.

Tay Yu-Jin

President, SIArb 2023-2025
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

By Gan Kam Yuin - Partner, Bih Li & Lee LLP and Timothy Quek - Associate, Bih Li & Lee LLP

1. Wilson Taylor Asia Pacific Pte Ltd (“WT”) engaged Dyna-Jet Pte Ltd (“Dyna-Jet”) to install underwater anodes. The contract contained a clause which stated that, “…If no amicable settlement is reached through discussions, at the election of Dyna-Jet, the dispute may be referred to and personally settled by means of arbitration proceedings…”

2. A dispute arose which could not be amicably resolved. Dyna-Jet sued WT in the High Court and WT applied for a stay of proceedings in favour of arbitration.

3. The Court of Appeal reiterated the 3 requirements for a stay of proceedings, namely,(1) a valid arbitration agreement between the parties, (2) that the dispute falls within the scope of the arbitration agreement, and (3) that the arbitration agreement is not null and void, inoperative or incapable of being performed1 .

4. On the first requirement, the Court of Appeal held that the arbitration clause was a valid arbitration agreement even though it was one-sided (giving only Dyna-Jet the right to compel WT to arbitrate a dispute) and even though it made arbitration optional2 .

5. However, the second requirement was not met. The Court of Appeal construed the arbitration clause to mean that Dyna-Jet alone had the right to choose the forum by which any dispute with WT would be tried. It was not a choice between commencing proceedings and not commencing proceedings, but a choice between commencing litigation and commencing arbitration . Since Dyna-Jet had filed the suit in the High Court, the dispute never fell within the scope of the arbitration clause. This was a consequence of the fact that the arbitration clause was optional at the election of Dyna-Jet4 .

6. The Court of Appeal therefore did not find it necessary to consider the third requirement5 . Interestingly, both the Assistant Registrar who heard the application for a stay at first instance, and the Judge who heard the appeal from that decision, had found that Dyna-Jet’s act of filing the suit in the High Court rendered the arbitration clause ‘inoperative or incapable of being performed’6 ie. that it was the third requirement rather than the second requirement that had not been met.

7.  Notably, the argument that a one-sided (or asymmetric) arbitration clause is not a valid arbitration agreement, was not accepted by the Assistant Registrar, the Judge or the Court of Appeal. The only debate (and perhaps in most situations it will be an academic debate as the end result will be the same) is whether that one-sidedness also means that the party with the right of election can thereby put a dispute out of the scope of the arbitration clause (as the Court of Appeal held) or that the party’s election for litigation renders the arbitration clause incapable of being performed (as the 2 lower fora held).

 

       

[1] At [11]

[2] At [13]

[3] At [23]

[4] At [24]

[5] At [25]

[6] At [6][9]

 

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