An arbitral award constitutes an autonomous enforcement title, and its service on the debtor as a condition precedent to enforcement cannot be replaced or substituted by service of the judgment by which the Court of Appeal dismissed the challenge to the award on the ground that no basis for nullity existed; given the particular structure of the award-challenge proceedings, the Court of Appeal may rule on the merits only in the rescissory phase, following a declaration of nullity in the rescinding phase.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal dismissing a challenge to an arbitral award for lack of grounds of nullity, at the close of the rescinding phase alone, cannot be equated with a substitutive ruling on the merits replacing the arbitral award as an enforcement title, since it contains no autonomous decision on the substantive claims of the parties.