The challenge to an arbitral award constitutes a challenge subject to restricted grounds of review, in which the cognisance devolved to the Court of Appeal is limited, at the rescinding stage, to the verification of the grounds of nullity raised by the parties and provided for by Article 829 of the Code of Civil Procedure, being configured as a sort of review of legality which does not have the consistency of a revisio prioris instantiae nor does it allow the judge to review on the merits the decision taken by the arbitrators by substituting it with his own.
In relation to the challenge to an arbitral award, pursuant to Article 829(3) of the Code of Civil Procedure, a challenge for violation of the rules of law relating to the merits of the dispute is admissible only if expressly provided for by the parties or by law, with the consequence that, in the absence of such provision in the arbitration clause, the admissible scope for alleging defects necessarily excludes the violation of rules of law pertaining to the merits of the dispute.
In arbitral proceedings, a violation of the principle of adversarial procedure relevant pursuant to Article 829(1)(9) of the Code of Civil Procedure occurs exclusively when it results in the prevention of one of the parties from presenting its defences on an equal basis with the other party, or from presenting its defences fully before the arbitrators at every stage of the proceedings, and must be assessed not from a formal perspective but within the framework of an inquiry aimed at ascertaining an actual impairment of the possibility to plead and contradict, with the consequence that the nullity of the award must be declared only where, following the allegation of the defect, there is an indication of the specific prejudice caused to the right of defence.
The nullity of the award for contradictory provisions pursuant to Article 829(1)(11) of the Code of Civil Procedure does not correspond to the defect under Article 360(1)(5) of the Code of Civil Procedure, but must be understood in the sense that the contradiction must emerge between the different components of the operative part, or between the reasoning and the operative part, whereas internal contradiction between different parts of the reasoning may assume relevance as a defect of the award only insofar as it determines the absolute impossibility of reconstructing the logical and legal reasoning underlying the decision due to the total absence of reasoning referable to its functional model.
The lack of reasoning of an arbitral award pursuant to Article 829(1)(5) of the Code of Civil Procedure, in relation to the requirement under Article 823 of the Code of Civil Procedure, is identifiable exclusively where the reasoning is entirely absent or is so deficient as not to allow an understanding of the course of reasoning followed by the arbitrators and the identification of the ratio of the decision adopted.
In proceedings for nullity of an arbitral award, the assessment of the facts alleged and of the evidence acquired during the arbitral proceedings cannot be contested, since such assessment is contractually entrusted to the institutional competence of the arbitrators, just as the judgment concerning the admissibility and relevance of means of proof is not incompatible with respect for the principle of adversarial procedure and cannot be censured as a violation of that principle pursuant to Article 829(1)(9) of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Determinations contained in a non-final award relating to mere procedural incidents, subsequently superseded by the regular conduct of the arbitral proceedings concluded with the final award between the proper parties, cannot determine the nullity of the final award where they have not entailed any actual consequence on the conduct of the proceedings nor have they resulted in concrete impairments of the right of defence.