Thorns And Roses Of Arbitration Clauses To Third-Party Beneficiaries

"If one voluntarily picks up a stem with thorns, one is also voluntarily, and necessarily, picking up the thorns," outlined the Alberta Court of King's Bench (the "ABKB"), in ruling that a third-party beneficiary to a contract between a general contractor (the "GC") and subcontractor was bound by the contract's arbitration clause, resulting in a time-barred claim.¹

In the construction industry, where a tangled web of inter-related contracts can be the norm, questions often arise as to whether a non-party seeking to avail themselves of benefits in one contract is also subject to its various restrictive covenants. In the Husky case discussed below, the ABKB clarified that parties take the good and they take the bad.