The presence of an arbitration clause does not prevent requesting and obtaining from ordinary courts a payment order for debts arising from contracts, while preserving the respondent's right to raise arbitral jurisdiction in opposition proceedings, with the consequent necessity for courts to revoke payment orders and refer parties to arbitrators.
Arbitration clauses cannot operate when debtors raise payment defenses or other debt-extinguishing events, since payment fully realizes interests protected by such clauses and it is inadmissible for clauses to operate beyond interests for whose protection they were established.
All defenses through which debtors can prove debt extinction are opposable in the presence of arbitration clauses, including payment, novation, release, set-off, merger, supervening impossibility, statute of limitations, res judicata, settlement, and any defense presenting precise debt-extinguishing facts.
An exception provided in arbitration clauses of excessively general scope, potentially inclusive of every petitum and causa petendi arising from contracts, would completely exclude the interested party's ability to avail themselves thereof, rendering such clauses inoperative and tamquam non esset.
Arbitration clauses cannot be used to paralyze defenses that question constitutive facts of debts or prevent defenses presenting precise debt-extinguishing facts independent of functional synallagmatic action.