Court of Napoli, judgment of 28 July 2026, No. 11854

The fees owed to arbitrators in contractual arbitration (arbitrato irrituale) are characterised as a debt arising from mandate, the enforced performance of which requires ordinary proceedings on the merits to be brought.
Art. 814 cod. proc. civ. establishes a mechanism whereby the arbitrator's own determination of his fees has the value of a contractual offer which, in order to bind the parties to the proceedings, must be accepted; in the absence of acceptance, the offer stands until the judicial determination applied for by the arbitrators themselves in order to obtain a judicial and hence enforceable title.