In matters of arbitration proceedings, the act by which a party intends to rely upon, pursuant to Article 821 of the Code of Civil Procedure, the expiry of the time limit for the rendering of the award as a ground of nullity, must be served on the opposing parties and on the arbitrators in the form required for service of civil procedural documents, on pain of ineffectiveness. Communication effected by means of certified electronic mail does not constitute a method equivalent to service through a process server, given that the term "service" employed by the legislature evokes the concept of procedural service and the requirement of service guarantees the certainty of knowledge by all interested persons of the intention to rely upon the forfeiture.
In matters of challenge to an arbitral award, the violation of the principle of adversarial proceedings must be examined not from a formal perspective, but rather within the framework of an inquiry aimed at ascertaining an actual impairment of the possibility to plead and contradict, so as to verify whether the act has nonetheless achieved the purpose of establishing proper adversarial proceedings. It follows that the nullity of the award must be declared only where, following the allegation of the defect capable of causing it, there is an indication of the specific prejudice that it has caused to the right of defence of the party.
In matters of challenge to an arbitral award, challenge on the ground of violation of rules of law relating to the merits of the dispute is admissible only if expressly provided for by the parties or by law, or in the cases exhaustively specified in Article 829 of the Code of Civil Procedure. In the absence of such prerequisites, challenges relating to the merits of the arbitral decision are inadmissible.