1- By Dr. Michael Cartier, Attorney at Law for Walder Wyss & Partners Ltd, posted 12th of November 2008: While it should be clear that a party may want to "enforce" only part of the award, the article does not address the issue, whether it is possible to limit the "recognition" of the court seized with enforcing the award. For example, is it possible to go to a court in a different country and ask them to only look at sections 1, 2 and 5 of the operative part of the award, but to turn a blind eye to the sections 3 and 4. In other words, can the act of recognition be split up into several sections or can a foreign decision only be considered as a whole. Since the court of recognition essentially takes transplants the arbitral tribunal's reasoning which is expressed by the award, it could be considered interfering with the totality of the arbitral tribunal's judgment to merely select particular sections of the operative part of the award for recognition. This is supported (to a degree) by the fact that under the NYC the whole award has to be submitted in order for it to be recognized and enforced. What are your thoughts? Should it be possible to also limit the recognition of an arbitral award to certain parts?


2- By Charbel Moarbes, posted 12th of November, 2008: As you say, a partial enforcement may be considered. Such was the case of the award which condemned a U.S. company to pay the French legal interest on the sums owed and additional interest of 5% for a delay. The enforcement was only partially granted, the additional interest were qualified by the State of Georgia as a penalty which were contrary to the public policy (Laminoirs Tréfileries-Cableries de Lens S.A. v. Southwire Co., 484 F. Supp. 1063 (ND Ga 1980).) In February 2, 2005: Deutshe Telecom and Elektrim (in the Vivendi case) requested and obtained a partial recognition of the arbitral award of November 26, 2004, deleting the part of the award in which the arbitral Tribunal declared it had no jurisdiction with respect to another party, Telco. In addition, the Polish court in charge of the recognition proceedings excluded Telco from therefrom. Hope this helps, Cheers.

3-By Kristof Cox Researcher at Catholic University Leuven - Arbitrator, posted 12th of November, 2008: Note that the New York Convention seems to allow partial recognition and enforcement, or at least provides for it in specific circumstances, since Article V (1) (c) reads: "The award deals with a difference not contemplated by or not falling within the terms of the submission to arbitration, or it contains decisions on matters beyond the scope of the submission to arbitration, provided that, if the decisions on matters submitted to arbitration can be separated from those not so submitted, that part of the award which contains decisions on matters submitted to arbitration may be recognized and enforced; or". Moreover, when the award is invoked in later proceedings for issue-preclusive purposes, the party relying on the award will rarely invoke all of its findings. Since courts and commentators tend to consider res judicata as a form of recognition, issue preclusion may be treated as a form of partial recognition. The question is, however, whether a party should be allowed to request recognition of those parts of the award that are favorable to him, while at the same time that party rejects enforcement of those parts that are unfavorable. This brings us to the much more fundamental question whether issue estoppel is or should be subject to the exceptions of Article V of the NY Convention, or whether it would be more appropriate to reserve those exceptions to enforcement as opposed to recognition.


4-By Dominique Grisay professeur at Haute Ecole Francisco Ferrer. posted 14th of November, 2008: I believe that we have here two different questions, that should not be mixed. The first one is linked to a possible discussion relating to the validity of an arbitral award. The second is that of the execution of the award. The question of the validity is, save the finally very limited exceptions of art V of the NY Convention, usually reserved to the courts of the seat of arbitration. Other jurisdictions may only annul in case of contrariety to the international public order. In the latter case, one would think that the annulment shall be global, not partial. On the other hand, practical execution of an award is a radically different issue. A parallel may be sought with an ordinary Court judgment, which according to me can be partially executed.