Arbitral Awards Challenges

Home / Practices / Arbitral Awards Challenges
All practices
ArbitrationPost-Award

Arbitral award challenges turn on narrow grounds and short deadlines. We move to vacate, annul, or set aside flawed awards, and we defend awards against attack, in courts in the United States and abroad.

An arbitral award is meant to be final, and courts will only disturb one on a short list of grounds. That cuts both ways: if you lost, the window to challenge is narrow and closes fast; if you won, you want the award to survive and convert into something you can collect. We handle both sides of the post-award fight, in U.S. courts and through local counsel abroad.

Grounds for Challenge

Award challenges succeed only on limited grounds defined by the applicable arbitration law, typically lack of jurisdiction, a tribunal that exceeded its authority, serious procedural irregularity or denial of a fair hearing, arbitrator bias or misconduct, and conflict with public policy. We assess candidly whether your facts fit one of those grounds before you spend resources, then build the strongest version of the challenge or the defense.

Set-Aside and Annulment Proceedings

We bring proceedings to vacate awards under the Federal Arbitration Act in U.S. courts and to set aside or annul awards at the seat of arbitration through coordinated local counsel, including ICSID annulment before an ad hoc committee. Because the deadlines are unforgiving, we move quickly to preserve your rights and frame the record around the specific defect that gives a reviewing court a reason to act.

Enforcement and Defense of Awards

On the winning side, our job is to make the award stick. We confirm and enforce awards under the New York Convention and the Federal Arbitration Act, defeat resistance and set-aside attempts, and pursue the debtor's assets across jurisdictions. We anticipate the enforcement fight from the start so the path from a favorable award to actual recovery is as short as the facts allow.

Frequently asked questions

The usual grounds are narrow: the tribunal lacked jurisdiction, there was a serious procedural irregularity, a party did not get proper notice, an arbitrator was biased or engaged in misconduct, the tribunal exceeded its authority, or the award violates public policy. Exactly which grounds apply depends on the law of the seat and the arbitration rules.

Setting aside happens in the courts at the seat of the arbitration and can wipe out the award entirely. Annulment is a specific term used in certain regimes like ICSID, where an ad hoc committee reviews the award. Both are different from simply resisting enforcement of the award in another country.

Not long. Deadlines vary by jurisdiction but are typically short, often 30 to 90 days from when you receive the award. If you miss the deadline, you can lose the right to challenge for good, so it pays to get a legal read on the award quickly.

Generally no. Most jurisdictions do not let courts second-guess the merits of the tribunal's decision. Challenges are limited to serious procedural defects, jurisdiction problems, or public policy violations, not ordinary mistakes about the law or the facts.

If the award is set aside, you may have to re-arbitrate the dispute in front of a new tribunal. If enforcement is refused in one country, the other side might still try to enforce the award somewhere else. What it means in practice depends on the grounds for the challenge and the law that applies.

Our team

People in this practice

Document products

Related document products

Order attorney-drafted documents related to this practice.

Browse all products

Bring our arbitral awards challenges team to your next matter.

Get in touch