In proceedings to set aside an arbitral award pursuant to Article 829 of the Code of Civil Procedure, where the arbitral tribunal bases its decision on a plurality of autonomous grounds each of which is sufficient to support it, the failure to challenge one of those rationes decidendi precludes the court hearing the challenge from reviewing the merits of the other unchallenged grounds.
The failure to bring an application for the recusal of the arbitrator before the delivery of the award, in accordance with the form and time-limits provided by Article 815 of the Code of Civil Procedure, results in the forfeiture of the right to raise such a challenge in proceedings to set aside the award.
The arbitral tribunal may declare that it lacks jurisdiction over counterclaims or set-off defences which fall outside the scope of the arbitration clause, whether by reason of the parties involved or by reason of the subject-matter of the relationship referred to arbitration.
In arbitral proceedings, the obligation to provide adequate reasons for interlocutory orders on evidence does not require the arbitrators to repeat those reasons where the same applications previously made are re-submitted, the arbitrators being entitled to defer the statement of reasons to the time of the final award.
In the absence of procedural formalities expressly prescribed by the parties in the arbitration agreement on pain of nullity pursuant to Article 829, paragraph 1, No. 7, of the Code of Civil Procedure, the only procedural nullities relevant for the purposes of challenging the award are those which have resulted in a breach of the principle of the right to be heard under Article 829, paragraph 1, No. 9, of the Code of Civil Procedure, namely where the parties were not afforded reasonable and equal opportunities of presenting their case under Article 816-bis, paragraph 1, of the Code of Civil Procedure.
For the purposes of challenging the award on the ground of manifest inconsistency of the reasoning under Article 829, No. 11, of the Code of Civil Procedure, only the inconsistency between different components of the operative part, or between the reasoning and the operative part, is relevant, whereas an internal inconsistency between different parts of the reasoning is relevant as a defect in the award only where it renders it absolutely impossible to reconstruct the logical and legal reasoning underlying the decision owing to the total absence of reasoning referable to its functional model.
The assessment of the facts pleaded and the evidence adduced in the course of the arbitral proceedings may not be challenged by way of an application to set aside the arbitral award, since such assessment is contractually entrusted to the jurisdiction of the arbitrators, nor may it be raised as a defect of reasoning under Article 829, No. 5, of the Code of Civil Procedure, such defect being confined to cases of total absence of reasoning or of reasoning so deficient as not to allow comprehension of the course of the reasoning and identification of the ratio decidendi.
The provision in the arbitration clause that the arbitration is to decide "according to law" must be construed exclusively as excluding a decision according to equity and does not entail the admissibility of a challenge to the award for breach of rules of law relating to the merits of the dispute under Article 829, paragraph 3, of the Code of Civil Procedure, such right of challenge requiring an express contractual provision.