Court of Appeal of Roma, judgment of 26 June 2026, No. 5484

Proceedings to set aside an arbitral award are subject to limited grounds of challenge, admissible only for specific procedural errors or for non-compliance with rules of law within the limits indicated by art. 829, co. 3, cod. proc. civ.; the rule requiring specificity in the formulation of grounds applies, the non-observance of which prevents verification of the correspondence between the complaints and the grounds of challenge exhaustively established by that provision.
Proceedings to set aside an arbitral award are structured in a rescinding phase, in which the court establishes the nullity defects without conducting findings of fact, and a rescissory phase, in which, following annulment, the court examines the merits within the limits of the claim and the grounds of action pleaded before the arbitrators; in the first phase, new claims and grounds other than the typical ones listed in art. 829 cod. proc. civ. are not permitted.
For the purpose of determining the admissibility of a challenge to an arbitral award on the ground of violation of rules of law concerning the merits, the law to which art. 829, co. 3, cod. proc. civ. refers is that in force at the time of conclusion of the arbitration agreement; where the agreement was concluded before the entry into force of Legislative Decree no. 40/2006, the previous rules apply, which admit such a challenge unless the parties authorised the arbitrators to decide in equity or declared the award unchallengeable.
A clause in an arbitration agreement conferring on the arbitral award 'the character of finality' must be interpreted as a preventive waiver by the parties of the right to challenge the award for violation of rules of law, since the expression connotes immutability and unchallengability of the decision; a waiver of the right to challenge does not require the adoption of any particular form and may be expressed by a formulation attributing a definitive character to the decision.
The defect of lack of reasoning in the award, referable to art. 829, co. 1, n. 5, cod. proc. civ., in relation to art. 823, n. 3, cod. proc. civ., arises only if the reasoning of the award is entirely absent or so deficient as to preclude identification of the ratio decidendi, or reveals a logical and argumentative process that is absolutely unacceptable in dialectical terms, thus amounting in substance to an absence of reasoning.
The nullity of an award for exceeding the scope of the arbitration agreement under art. 829, co. 1, n. 4, cod. proc. civ. is not made out where the alleged overstepping of the arbitrators' jurisdiction is merely the consequence of a different factual construction from that accepted by the award, which is not in itself sufficient to constitute the defect alleged.