Substantial injustice: fair hearing and exercise of discretion

PBO v DONPRO [2021] EWHC 1951 (Comm) is one of those rare cases where the conduct of the arbitral tribunal was such as to trigger the natural justice requirements of sections 33 and 68(2)(a) of the Arbitration Act 1996 and to lead to the remission of the award. In essence the tribunal reached its conclusions in a manner that departed from the cases presented by the parties and exercised a procedural discretion to disallow amendments in a way that led Bryan J to conclude that no reasonable tribunal would have acted.

The facts