An arbitral award declared enforceable, having lost its character as a private act, acquires the value of a judgment capable of producing the effects of res judicata where the available means of challenge have not been exercised in time or have been exhausted without success.
The quashing on remand of the appellate judgment declaring the nullity of an award does not revive the award; the rescissory phase remains exclusively devolved to the court of remand, which alone has jurisdiction to rule on the validity or invalidity of the arbitral decision and, if that assessment is negative, to decide the merits in the rescissory stage.
Where, following the quashing of a judgment of nullity of an award, the proceedings on remand are not resumed and are extinguished pursuant to art. 393 cod. proc. civ., the judgment of nullity becomes effective by operation of art. 310 cod. proc. civ., and the arbitral decision — being a purely jurisdictional act — does not retain any validity.
Credits established by an arbitral award that has been declared null and void may not be relied upon in set-off, as the certainty requirement for the cross-claim is not satisfied until the rescissory proceedings have been concluded by a judgment substituting the annulled award.