Judgment of the Svea Court of Appeal, 20 March 2015, Case No. T 8043-13

Summary: The claimants moved to annul the arbitration award on three grounds: (1) the arbitration agreement had ceased to apply when one of the claimants declared bankruptcy; (2) the arbitral tribunal committed procedural errors that affected the outcome of the case; and (3) the SCC’s appointment of arbitrators violated the principle of equal treatment embedded in the Swedish Arbitration Act. Under Article 13(4) of the SCC Rules, if there are multiple parties on either side of the arbitration, and those parties fail to jointly appoint an arbitrator, the SCC shall appoint the entire tribunal. In the present arbitration, the two respondents (claimants in the challenge proceedings before the Court) had failed to make a joint appointment. The SCC therefore appointed all three arbitrators. Among those appointed was the arbitrator previously appointed by the claimant in the arbitration (respondent before the Court), but neither of the two arbitrators appointed by the other side. The Court concluded that the SCC’s decision did not violate Article 13(4) or the principle of equal treatment. The Court reasoned that the SCC had not given preferrable treatment to the party requesting the arbitration, because the respondents had not established that their failure to jointly appoint an arbitrator was due to a dispute between them. One of the judges submitted a dissenting opinion regarding the standard of review for challenges based on the principle of equal treatment.