The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nid­co) has been suc­cess­ful in its le­gal chal­lenge to set aside the $850 mil­lion ar­bi­tra­tion award to Con­stru­to­ra OAS SA over the Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion project.

In his rul­ing a few mo­ments ago, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered that the mat­ter be re­mit­ted to the Lon­don Court of In­ter­na­tion­al Ar­bi­tra­tion for fur­ther re­con­sid­er­a­tion and OAS was al­so or­dered to pay costs.

The judge, in his judg­ment, found that on the face of the award the tri­bunal fell in­to er­ror and dis­re­gard­ed or mis­con­strued the law and/or failed to prop­er eval­u­ate the ev­i­dence.

Seep­er­sad said "Hav­ing re­viewed the ev­i­dence which is be­fore the tri­bunal, this court is res­olute in its view that no rea­son­able ar­bi­tra­tor cog­nizant of the law and seize of the ev­i­dence ad­duced could have ar­rived at the po­si­tion re­flect­ed in the award."

On April 16 ar­bi­tra­tors John Fel­las, Adam Con­sta­ble, KC, and An­drew White, KC, up­held OAS’s ar­bi­tra­tion claim against Nid­co and or­dered US$126.3 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion on a par­tial fi­nal award on April 16, ar­bi­tra­tors John Fel­las, Adam Con­sta­ble, KC, and An­drew White, KC, up­held OAS’s ar­bi­tra­tion claim against Nid­co and or­dered US$126.3 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion.

How­ev­er, in her sub­mis­sions be­fore Seep­er­sad, British King's Coun­sel An­neliese Day claimed that the award is­sued by ar­bi­tra­tors should be set aside as the pan­el made er­rors when as­sess­ing the case. She cit­ed sev­er­al in­stances in which she claimed the pan­el failed to pro­vide rea­sons why it ig­nored ev­i­dence, which sup­port­ed Nid­co's con­tentions.

OAS’s at­tor­ney Rol­ston Nel­son had coun­tered that the judge should not en­ter­tain the case based on a clause in the con­tract be­tween the par­ties, which stat­ed that they would re­solve their dis­putes sole­ly through the ar­bi­tra­tion process.

OAS was award­ed the con­tract for the project in 2011 at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $5.3 bil­lion. Af­ter the con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed, the project was put on hold for sev­er­al years be­fore be­ing restart­ed with lo­cal con­trac­tors.