Court of Appeal of Milano, judgment of 26 June 2026, No. 2018

An action to set aside an arbitral award does not constitute an ordinary appeal: the court is not called upon to confirm or reform a first-instance decision but to verify whether the award rendered by the arbitral tribunal is invalid on one of the grounds exhaustively listed in art. 829 cod. proc. civ.
Proceedings to set aside an arbitral award are structured in two distinct phases: the rescinding phase, aimed at establishing the existence of the nullity grounds exhaustively provided by law, and the rescissory phase, in which, following annulment of the award, the court proceeds to re-examine the merits of the dispute pursuant to art. 830 cod. proc. civ.
In proceedings to set aside an arbitral award, which are subject to limited grounds of challenge, the challenging party bears the burden of formulating its grounds with the requisite specificity, precisely identifying the correspondence between the complaints raised and the grounds of challenge exhaustively established by art. 829 cod. proc. civ.; the specificity requirement must be understood more strictly than in ordinary appellate proceedings, the rescinding phase being analogous to an appeal on points of law.
A party challenging an arbitral award may not introduce new grounds of challenge in the course of the proceedings beyond those indicated in the originating document; the court may not raise the nullity of the award of its own motion nor declare it on grounds other than those relied upon by the challenging party, in application of the principle of party disposition and the principle of correspondence between claim and judgment.
The nullity of an award for contradictory provisions under art. 829, co. 1, n. 11, cod. proc. civ. does not arise from every internal contradiction between different parts of the reasoning or from mere inadequacy of the reasoning, but only where there is a contradiction between the various operative provisions, or a contradiction between the reasoning and the operative part such as to render it impossible to understand the ratio decidendi, equivalent to a substantive total absence of reasoning.
Internal contradiction between different parts of the reasoning of an award, not expressly listed among the grounds of nullity, may be relevant as a defect of the award only where it makes it absolutely impossible to reconstruct the logical and legal path underlying the decision owing to the total absence of reasoning referable to its functional model.
The nullity of an award for violation of procedural public policy under art. 829, co. 3, cod. proc. civ. must be interpreted restrictively, confined to the fundamental and mandatory norms of the legal order, excluding an attenuated notion of public policy coinciding with the body of mandatory rules.
The nullity of an award for failure to decide under art. 829, co. 1, n. 12, cod. proc. civ. does not arise where the arbitral tribunal has considered the claim, even if by declaring it inadmissible; a declaration of inadmissibility constitutes a ruling on the claim and does not give rise to the defect of failure to decide.