A challenge to a contractual arbitration award (arbitrato irrituale), pursuant to Article 808-ter of the Code of Civil Procedure, may be brought exclusively by a party who has acquired party status in the arbitration proceedings in which the award was rendered, given that the substantive effects of the arbitral determination affect only the parties to the arbitration agreement. It follows that the arbitrators, by reason of their position of impartiality and absolute detachment in substantive terms from the effects of the award, lack standing as defendants in proceedings for a declaration of nullity or annulment of the award.
An uncontested payment order, by which payment is sought of the fees for the activity performed by the arbitrators and for the deposit of the award, acquires the effect of res judicata not only as regards the claim brought, but also in relation to the legal basis underpinning it, with the consequence that any further examination of the grounds adduced in support of the related claim in other proceedings is precluded, including an action for liability brought against the arbitrator for alleged breach of the arbitration mandate.
In contractual arbitration (arbitrato irrituale), which may be qualified as a collective or joint mandate conferred upon the arbitrators for the resolution of the dispute by means of a contractual instrument, each arbitrator may validly ratify the acts of the others by adopting them as his own, so that an arbitral determination signed by only one of the arbitrators and subsequently adopted by the others, even through conduct by implication or by entering an appearance in proceedings in which authorship is claimed, must be deemed validly decided by the arbitral tribunal.
An arbitration clause referring to any dispute relating to the interpretation and performance of the contract does not include a claim for damages based on the failure to perform or defective performance of the arbitral award, since, notwithstanding the breadth of its formulation, it remains in any event referable to the contract and not to the award, an ontologically distinct and autonomous instrument forming the basis of the claim for damages.