The Chamber of Arbitration of Milan has recently issued its guidelines for Tribunal-appointed experts in arbitration proceedings administered by the Chamber.
These guidelines are available on the CAM’s website and you may easily access them by clicking here.
The guidelines are not binding. Their purpose is to help the Tribunal-appointed experts to carry out their activities, also in order to prevent possible procedural errors such as a violation of the adversarial principle. Therefore, “the guidelines do not amount to new arbitration rules. They are a summary of what some Courts have held. These guidelines may help experts so that they do not incur in any procedural error, such as a violation of the adversarial principle, or errors arising out of a limited knowledge of arbitration.”
In other words, the guidelines are a guidebook on the taking of evidence when an expert opinion is needed (this is why the guidelines could also be useful for the arbitrators). Arbitral Tribunals or experts are free, if they so wish, to deviate from these guidelines. However, these guidelines shall be binding, pursuant to Article 2(1) of the Rules of the Chamber of Arbitration of Milan, if the parties referred to them in the arbitration clause. Indeed, Articles 2(1) of the Rules of the Chamber of Arbitration of Milan notes that “The arbitral proceedings shall be governed by the Rules, by the rules agreed upon by the parties up to the constitution of the Arbitral Tribunal if consistent with the Rules, or, in default, by the rules set by the Arbitral Tribunal.”
The guidelines, which are structured into articles (referred to as “points”), are made up of five sections (appointment: Articles 1-10; expert’s operations: Articles 11-18; expert’s report: Articles 19-20; international arbitration: Article 21; costs: Articles 22-24), plus two appendixes. The first appendix contains several rules (a selection of Articles from the CAM’s Rules and the CAM’s Code of ethics, as well as the Italian Code of Civil Procedure). The second contains the declaration of acceptance and independence of the expert.