Court of Appeal of Milano, judgment of 17 July 2026, No. 2203

A challenge to an award for nullity is not ordinary appellate proceedings but a means of challenge limited to specified grounds, in which the court is called upon only to verify whether the decision rendered by the private body is invalid on one of the grounds exhaustively set out in art. 829 cod. proc. civ.; only upon the conclusion of the iudicium rescindens with a finding of nullity is it possible, under art. 830 cod. proc. civ., to re-examine the merits in the subsequent iudicium rescissorium.
The grounds of nullity of the award must be formulated with rigorous specificity, even greater than that required in ordinary appellate proceedings, the rescinding stage being akin to an appeal to the Court of Cassation; the party may not add grounds beyond those set out in the originating document, and the court may neither raise the invalidity of the award of its own motion nor declare it void on grounds other than those on which the challenge is based.
An arbitration clause referring to arbitrators disputes arising from the application or interpretation of the articles of association also encompasses a dispute concerning the validity, whether total or partial, of the provisions of the articles, which is a question internal to that application and interpretation; an award ruling on the partial nullity of a provision of the articles therefore does not exceed the limits of the arbitration agreement.
A decision which, in regulating the distribution of profits, takes the provisions of the articles as the starting point of its reasoning, while partly disapplying them, does not exceed the limits of the arbitration agreement.
The reference to public policy contained in art. 829, co. 3, second sentence, cod. proc. civ. is to be construed restrictively, by reference only to the fundamental and peremptory rules of the legal order, excluding an attenuated notion coinciding with the whole body of mandatory rules; the defect of ruling beyond the claims therefore does not in itself amount to a breach of procedural public policy.
A defect of reasoning relevant under art. 829, co. 1, No. 5, cod. proc. civ. exists only where the reasons of the award are entirely absent or so deficient as not to permit the ratio decidendi to be identified, amounting to a non-statement of reasons.
The nullity of the award for contradictory provisions under art. 829, co. 1, No. 11, cod. proc. civ. requires a contradiction between the various components of the operative part or between the reasons and the operative part, whereas a contradiction internal to the reasons is relevant only where it renders it absolutely impossible to reconstruct the logical and legal reasoning of the decision.