Director Committed for Contempt of Court

The integrity of international commercial arbitration depends upon compliance with the tribunal's award. In practice this is rarely a problem, but sometimes cases occur where there is failure to comply with the award. This strikes at the heart of the consensual nature of the process. Such possibility should be considered by a claimant before giving notice of arbitration, especially regarding the jurisdiction in which the award may be enforced. In this case the judge has given a clear example of how the courts deal with an abuse of the process and how contempt of court can lead to imprisonment. The case gives a clear signal that our courts robustly support international arbitration in that the learned judge, Mrs Justice Cockerel, robustly enforced an international arbitration award and penalised a defaulting defendant director for contempt.