In the Court of Session yesterday Lord Glennie issued a landmark
decision in the first application of its kind put before the Court.
It was an application for leave to appeal on grounds of legal error
against a decision of an arbitrator appointed under the new
Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010 ("the 2010 Act").
Rule 69 of the Scottish Arbitration Rules ("the
Rules"), which forms part of the new statutory regime
introduced by the 2010 Act, gives parties to an arbitration the
right to appeal to the Court on the ground of legal error. However,
the parties can choose to forgo that right by disapplying that
Rule. In this case, as will be the case in many others, the parties
had not disapplied Rule 69. However, the right of a party to make a
legal error appeal is constrained by the terms of Rule 70 of the
Rules. It provides that such an appeal may be made only with the
agreement of the parties or with leave of the
Court. There was no such agreement of the parties in this case
