The challenge to an arbitral award constitutes a means of appeal subject to limited grounds of review, by virtue of which the Court of Appeal is not called upon to affirm or reverse a first instance decision rendered by an ordinary court, but rather to verify whether the decision issued by a non-state body, to which the parties have referred the resolution of the dispute, is affected by one of the defects exhaustively provided for by Article 829 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
The challenge to an arbitral award is structured in two phases: a first rescinding phase, directed at ascertaining the nullity of the award and which may conclude with its annulment, and a second rescissory phase, merely contingent, subordinated to prior annulment and aimed at re-examining the merits of the dispute.
In a challenge for nullity of an arbitral award, the examination of the merits is only contingent and conditioned both by the identification of grounds for nullity and by their acceptance; it follows that the specific identification of grounds for challenge for nullity is essential on pain of inadmissibility and must be understood in a strict sense.
The defect of contradiction in an arbitral award, relevant pursuant to Article 829, paragraph 1, No. 11, of the Code of Civil Procedure, must emerge between the different components of the operative part or between the reasoning and the operative part; internal contradiction between different parts of the reasoning may assume relevance as a ground for nullity of the award only where it results in the absolute impossibility of reconstructing the logical-legal reasoning underlying the decision due to the total absence of reasoning referable to its functional model.