The Halki

In Halki Shipping Corp. v. Sopex Oils Ltd (The Halki) 1 the Court of Appeal decided that it is no longer possible to bring proceedings under R.S.C., Ord. 14 to enforce a claim to which there is no arguable defence if it falls within the ambit of an arbitration clause, unless the claim is admitted, so that there is no dispute or difference to be referred to arbitration. They upheld by a majority (Hirst, L.J., dissenting) the decision of Clarke, J.,2 as to the now more limited jurisdiction of the court when a mandatory stay of proceedings is applied for under the Arbitration Act 1996, s. 9. The court encountered understandable difficulty in eliciting this decision from the chequered history of the previous jurisdiction under the Arbitration Act 1975, s. 1(1) and the ambiguous drafting not of s. 9 of the 1996 Act itself but of the commentary upon it in the Report of the Departmental Advisory Committee on the Arbitration Bill (“the DAC Report”). One matter was, however, overlooked: there is no right of appeal from a decision under s. 9. It is uncertain, therefore, whether the House of Lords will have the opportunity to consider this complex and important decision or indeed any other point of law arising under s. 9.