AMICI CURIAE BRIEF: BPZ LLC & GrainPower LLC
Amicus Curiae Brief in case No. 910/3208/22
01 November 2023 the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court issued its resolution in case No. 910/3208/22 between BPZ LLC (Claimant) and GrainPower LLC (Respondent) (https://reyestr.court.gov.ua/Review/114685588) (Judge-Rapporteur Pilkov K.M.).
This case raises important arbitration issues, including the binding nature of the arbitration agreement for non-signatories, the application of the New York Convention to arbitration agreements, the possibility of referring disputes between two Ukrainian companies to arbitration outside Ukraine and enforcement of such an arbitration agreement by Ukrainian courts. When answering all these questions, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court applied the principle of pro-arbitration interpretation of arbitration agreements, thus emphasizing once again on the importance of this approach for Ukrainian courts.
This case is also of particular significance as the Ukrainian court (Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court) for the first time on its own initiative requested expert organizations to provide an amici curiae brief, recognized in the world as a tool for obtaining competent opinions from impartial experts regarding problematic issues of the case. Considering the provisions of the Regulation on the Scientific Advisory Council at the Supreme Court, which allows involvement of practitioners in its work, the Grand Chamber requested and received the amici curiae briefs from the UAA and the ICAC.
Previously, the UAA had already submitted its opinions in amici curiae briefs format to the Supreme Court in other cases, but exclusively on its own initiative, independently choosing important for UAA members cases and determining the issues for analysis.
This time, at the request of the Supreme Court, the UAA Working Group under the leadership of UAA President O. Perepelynska prepared its Amici Curiae Brief on the issues specified by the Supreme Court. The Working Group included Anastasiia Kotliarchuk, Valeriia Lada, Volodymyr Nakonechnyi, Henrietta Yaitska, Kristina Mysenko, Maryana Antonovych, Marta Chernychka, Oleksander Droug, Oleksii Maslov, Olena Perepelynska, Tetyana Zavalko, Timur Bondarev. Please find the full text of the UAA Amici Curiae Brief here.
UAA is sincerely grateful to the Supreme Court for the trust and is proud to have received the first request in Ukraine for the preparation of an amici curiae brief from the Supreme Court. UAA welcomes the initiative of the Supreme Court to use this tool and hopes that it will be actively used in the future, which will contribute to further formation of pro-arbitration case law in Ukraine, taking into account the best practices in this area.