Following are this month’s recent developments in international arbitration law published by the International Law Office (free registration is required to view the articles): Turkey: Bilateral investment treaties and international arbitration Ecuador: Court prevents a disrupting strategy to derail arbitration India: Bilateral investment treaties: chosen pathway for dispute resolution Italy: Mandatory mediation: the Italian experience, two years on Ukraine: Ukraine earmarks UAH100 million for ICSID awards Greece: Punitive damages awarded in arbitration refused enforcement USA: Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals applies Rent-A-Center severability rule Stay tuned!

Professor S.I. Strong (University of Missouri School of Law) has posted “Mandatory Arbitration of Internal Trust Disputes: Improving Arbitrability and Enforceability Through Proper Procedural Choices,” 28 Arbitration International __ (forthcoming 2012) on SSRN. The abstract is: Trusts and their civil law equivalents, often known as foundations or associations, play a large and increasing role in the global economy, holding trillions of dollars worth of assets and generating billions of dollars worth of revenue and trustees’ fees annually. Once considered nothing more than “mere” estate planning devices, trusts are now more often seen in commercial rather than in private contexts, and often feature sophisticated financial institutions as professional trustees. With favorable tax laws in various off-shore jurisdictions making international trusts increasingly popular and hostile trust litigation reaching epidemic proportions, arbitration would seem to be many parties’ dispute resolution mechanism of choice. To some extent, this is very much the case, with arbitration often being used to resolve conflicts between trusts and external third parties. However, arbitration of internal trust disputes – by far the more common type of concern in this area of law – is much more controversial and has been the subject of extensive and vigorous debate in the trust industry. Although trust experts have written extensively on mandatory trust arbitration, the arbitration community has been strangely silent in these discussions, and this Article is among the first to consider the unique challenges facing future arbitration of internal trust disputes from the arbitral perspective. In so doing, this Article provides new insights on the types of procedures that are necessary to ensure procedural fairness in what is often a complex, multiparty proceeding. This Article also considers what steps settlors can take to improve the enforceability of an arbitration provision located in the trust itself and analyzes the only set of institutional rules targeted specifically toward trust disputes – the American Arbitration Association’s (AAA) Trust Arbitration Rules – by comparing the AAA approach to the newly identified best practices in this field and to certain related initiatives from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the German Arbitration Institute (DIS). The full article may be downloaded here. Other scholarly papers by Professor S.I. Strong are here.

We invite you to check out The Three Little Pigs Go to Mediation video, created by the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, this interesting video explains and demonstrates the principles of mediation. The video is available here.

On June 8, 2012, the Texas Supreme Court granted petition for review to Rachal v. Reitz, 347 S.W.3d 305 (Tex.App.—Dallas 2011, pet. granted). The issue is whether a provision stating the settlor’s intent that disputes involving the trust be resolved by arbitration is enforceable under the Texas Arbitration Act . The appellate court had declined to compel arbitration on the grounds that a valid agreement to arbitrate did not exist. Here are the electronic briefs of the case: Petition for Review – Filed: 09/08/2011 [1.88 MB] Response to Petition – Filed: 01/04/2012 [80 KB] Petitioner’s Brief on the Merits – Filed: 03/19/2012 [195 KB] Respondent’s Brief on the Merits – Filed: 04/16/2012 [126 KB] Petitioner’s Reply Brief – Filed: 04/27/2012 Note that two articles by Professor S.I. Strong -contributor of this blog- have been cited in Petitioner’s Reply Brief. Stay tuned!