A party that does not raise the objection of the arbitrator's lack of jurisdiction on the ground that the claims exceed the scope of the arbitration agreement during the course of the arbitral proceedings may not, for the first time in proceedings for the challenge of the award, raise the issue under Article 829(1)(4) of the Code of Civil Procedure, by application of the preclusion principle established by Article 817(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Article 829(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure, as reformulated by Legislative Decree No. 40/2006, applies to arbitral proceedings commenced after the entry into force of the reform; for the purposes of the admissibility of a challenge for breach of the rules of law on the merits, the applicable law is to be identified as that in force at the time of the conclusion of the arbitration agreement, so that in the case of an agreement concluded prior to the 2006 reform the challenge to the award must be deemed admissible under the previous rules, unless the parties had authorised the arbitrators to decide according to equity or had declared the award not subject to challenge.
The party relying on the application of the previous rules governing the challenge of arbitral awards for errores in iudicando bears the burden of pleading and proving the date of conclusion of the arbitration agreement and its precedence over the entry into force of the 2006 reform; in the absence of adequate pleading and proof, the rules in force at the time of the available articles of association apply.
A challenge to an arbitral award for breach of the rules of law is admissible only within the limits of breach of law under Article 360(1)(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure; consequently, a ground of challenge contesting the assessment of facts and evidence obtained in the arbitral proceedings is inadmissible, since such assessment falls within the institutional competence of the arbitrators and is excluded from review by the court hearing the challenge.
Inconsistency in an arbitral award, for the purposes of nullity under Article 829(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure, must arise between the different components of the operative part (dispositivo), or between the reasoning and the operative part; internal inconsistency between different parts of the reasoning is relevant only where it prevents the reconstruction of the logical and legal reasoning underlying the decision by reason of the total absence of reasoning referable to its functional model.
The obligation to set out a summary of the reasons imposed on arbitrators by Article 823(5) of the Code of Civil Procedure, non-compliance with which gives rise to nullity of the award under Article 829(1)(5) of the Code of Civil Procedure, may be regarded as not satisfied only where the reasoning is entirely absent or so deficient as not to permit the logical reasoning of the arbitral decision to be understood, or contains irreconcilable contradictions rendering the rationale of the decision incomprehensible.