Skip to content

Supreme Court of Justice (Portugal) | Appeal against the Arbitral Award | 10-11-2016| Case #043

Supreme Court of Justice
Date: 10-11-2016
Case Nr. 1052/14.1TBBCL.P1.S1
LINK DGSI

Headline:

Appeal of the annulment of an award should evaluate the specific grounds used to annul the award; and a review of the merits of the judgement should not be done.  

Summary:

  1. The rule contained in no. 1 of Art. 671 of the CPC should not be interpreted as meaning to exclude the exercise of a ‘double degree of jurisdiction’ in cases where the lower court has exceptionally acted, not as a court of appeal but as a court of the first instance. This occurs in cases where the lower court assesses the object of litigation – such as in actions for annulment of an arbitration award.
  2. In the system of appeals that governs us, the STJ retains a ‘double degree of jurisdiction’ over final decisions rendered by the lower court in actions or procedures that, according to the law, were required to be initiated before them – relevant parallel places where access to the STJ is secured can be summoned in relation to final decisions rendered in cases at first instance by the Relations, as is the case with special actions for compensation against magistrates or with the foreign judgment review.
  3. For this reason, it is admissible to conduct an interim review of the judgment of the Court of Appeal which examined the annulment of the action. However, this does not allow for review of the merits of the case, which is barred for the state courts by virtue of Art. 46, paragraph 9 of the LAV. The appeal is solely and strictly to verify the specific grounds for annulment of the arbitration award.
  4. This case summary was kindly prepared by Sameer Thakur (sameerthakur@live.in, NALSAR University of Law), Rishabh Raheja, (rishabharaheja@gmail.com, NALSAR University of Law), and Abhishek Babbar (abhishekbabbar1996@gmail.com).