A FEW NOTES TO THE ARBITRATION PROCEDURE IN GENERAL

I. Arbitration Procedure in General

The Arbitration Court of the Czech Republic presents to the visitors of its web pages a comprehensive view of the arbitration procedure issues in such a way, that the physical entities from among the professional as well as general legal, economic and other public dealing in this or another way with the arbitration procedure issues or utilizing the services of ad-hoc arbitrators associated at the Arbitration Court of the Czech Republic could have an objective idea of advantages of the arbitration procedure (arbitration) maintained by a-hoc arbitrators and on the principles of the arbitration procedure in general.

A customary way of how to achieve a protection of the breached or jeopardized rights within the frame of a certain legal relationship is a legal process. The length of the legal process however causes sometimes, that the protection of the breached or jeopardized rights is weakened considerably, if not denied entirely. The protection of the rights is, as the classic says, efficient only when it is provided immediately, which is not usually a rule in the court practice.

The arbitration procedure transfers the decision-making on legal disputes between the parties of a certain legal relationship to the arbitrators (one or more), who decide without useless formalities by issuance of an arbitration award. It is a final decision (no appeal can be filed against it) which is applicable in the event of non-fulfillment of the imposed duty in the execution of the decision as an execution title.

The advantage of the arbitration procedure is its speed and an immediate enforceability of the arbitration award. As opposed to the legal process, there are higher costs involved here, which however need to be compared to the indirect costs should there be a prolonged and burdening legal process. The arbitration procedure used to be typical rather for commercial disputes, the recent development (for instance in the EU) nevertheless leads to the result, that it is used also for the consumer disputes, but also for other disputes, of course of a civil law nature.

II. Arbitration Contract

The basis of the arbitration procedure is a valid arbitration contract or an arbitration clause (hereinafter referred to as „Arbitration Contract“) concluded between the parties of a certain legal relationship. The Arbitration Contract may be a part of the just concluded contract (this contains a provision on the fact, that all the disputes, which arise in conjunction with its application, will be settled instead of by the legal process by an arbitrator or arbitrators) or may be concluded additionally only after origin of a dispute and may concern only a certain, already arisen dispute. The Arbitration Contract is binding also for the successors of the parties, unless it expressly rules this out.

The Arbitration Contract may concern only a certain area of the legal relations. These include ownership disputes (not the disputes arising in conjunction with the execution of a decision or resulting from a bankruptcy or a composition), regarding which the parties may enter into an amicable agreement. The Contract must be concluded in writing.