1. [I]n case of an arbitral tribunal dismissed by a separate order, a plea raised by a party that the arbitral tribunal did not have jurisdiction in a dispute or a demand of the opposing party asserted during the course of the proceeding exceeds the scope of the arbitration agreement (Art. 1180 § 2 of the PCPC), a state court’s review of the legitimacy of this position can take place only in the manner provided for in the Art. 1180 § 3 of the PCPC… .

2. A valid state court’s order confirming jurisdiction of an arbitral tribunal, delivered in accordance with Art. 1180 § 3 of the PCPC, is binding in the proceedings regarding a petition to set aside an arbitration award… and excludes the possibility of re-examination of the issue of the arbitration agreement… . 

3. If, pursuant to Art. 1180 § 3 of the PCPC, a state court has validly dismissed a motion for declaration that the arbitral tribunal does not have jurisdiction to settle the dispute, such a ruling binds the state court in the case of setting aside of the arbitration award in such a way that if there are no new facts which may justify the expiration of the effect of the arbitration agreement after the state court has delivered its ruling pursuant to Art. 1180 § 3 of the PCPC, a party cannot effectively rely on non-existence of the arbitration agreement (Art. 1206 § 1 point 1 of the PCPC).

4. Submitting an arbitration award on lack of jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal to review by a two-instance state court also fully satisfies the parties’ right to court and the right to have the case heard in two-instance proceedings… .

1. [P]assing an order concerning recognition or enforcement of an arbitration award does not preclude any subsequent setting aside of the award …. .

2. In proceedings regarding recognition and enforcement of a domestic arbitration award, a state court examines only the existence of the prerequisites indicated in Art. 1214 § 3 of the PCPC – they do not include the invalidity or ineffectiveness or expiration of an arbitration agreement – which corresponds only to a part of the grounds examined in a case regarding a petition to set aside an arbitration award, that is the grounds examined by a court ex officio under Art. 1206 § 2 of the PCPC. Therefore, there is a need to agree with the view that, with reference to domestic arbitration awards, proceedings regarding a petition to set aside an arbitration award primarily have a control function.

1. The grounds of a petition to set aside an arbitration award have been divided in Art. 1206 of the PCPC into two categories, to which the prerequisites set out in § 1 and § 2 of this provision correspond. In case of the grounds indicated in § 1, the state court shall take them into account only upon request of a party, so it is bound by the grounds relied upon by the petitioner. The grounds indicated in § 2 shall be taken into account ex officio.

2. The public policy clause…, like any general clause is not precisely defined and does not include an exhaustive list of principles. Therefore in each case it is necessary to consider whether the circumstances make it possible to draw the conclusion that a violation was in breach of principles that are the fundamental principles of the legal order. Pursuant to the public policy clause expressed in Art. 1206 § 2 of the PCPC, an arbitration award shall be set aside when effects determined by its content are irreconcilable with the particular norm which is one of the fundamental principles of that order, which leaves a great degree of discretion to the state court ruling in a given case.

3. [A]n arbitration award shall correspond to the wording of the statement of claim. Depending on the content of the claim, an arbitration award may establish, rule on, or shape a right or a legal relationship.

4. [A]lthough Art. 1188 § 1 of the PCPC does not indicate obligatory elements of a statement of claim in arbitration, including the exact wording of the claim…, nonetheless the necessity to specify the claim, as the element determining the subject matter of arbitration, may be derived indirectly from Art. 1202 first sentence of the PCPC; it may also be derived from the procedural rules agreed upon by the parties or defined in the rules of arbitration. Irrespective of the above, this does not mean, however, that going beyond the limits of a claim by an arbitral tribunal evades the state court review.

5. [T]he audi alterem partem principle is the fundamental principle of the legal order. The audi alterem partem principle means the parties’ right to conduct a dispute in a way designated by them and shifts to them the burden of gathering factual and evidentiary material which is necessary to resolve a case.

[T]he mere inclusion of an arbitration agreement in another country in a contract does not result in the invalidity of the arbitration agreement. Nevertheless, it is impossible to leave out the circumstances which led to the inclusion of the arbitration agreement in the contract, as well as it is impossible to leave out the wording of the contract, if the contract may affect the determination and assessment whether an activity of the contractor benefiting from the presumption indicated in Art. 17 (1) of the Act on National Court Register was characterized by good or bad faith.

1. It clearly follows from Art. 1206 of the PCPC that the list of the grounds for a petition to set aside an arbitration award contained therein is of an exhaustive character. Cognition of a state court in such a case is limited to examination whether the ground asserted in the petition, which may be one of the circumstances specified in Art. 1206 § 1 of the PCPC, exists. In addition, in the proceedings, a state court shall take into account ex officio the prerequisites set forth in Art. 1206 § 2 of the PCPC, irrespective of whether they were indicated in the petition or not.

2. A reasoning of an arbitration award does not need to meet the same requirements as a reasoning of a state court ruling, and an arbitral tribunal is not obliged to indicate in the reasoning of an arbitration award a precise interpretation of the relevant substantive provisions… .

3. The public policy clause in not intended for a review of an arbitration award on the merits. By application of this clause, the point is not to determine whether the award is consistent with all relevant mandatorily applicable legal regulations, but only to determine whether the award effected a result contrary to the fundamental principles of the domestic legal order.

4. As far as the assessment of the contested award in terms of infringement of governing norms in particular fields of substantive and procedural law is concerned, the following principles in this scope, indicated in the case-law, shall be taken into account: the right to court, understood as the right to have the case heard by an independent court within fairly conducted proceedings…, the obligation to redress damage by the party to a contract who did not perform or performed an obligation improperly, if there is a normal causal link between the conduct of the party and the damage…, and an obligation to redress a damage caused by an unlawful act…, the principle that compensation (both arising out of an unlawful act or under a contract) is only due if the aggrieved party sustained a damage…, the principle of business freedom and freedom of contract, and the principle of the autonomy of the will of the parties and equality of the parties…, the principle of stability of contracts and contractual fairness, and the principle of compensatory character of liability expressed in the prohibition of imposing sanctions in the form of pecuniary benefits that enrich one of the parties…, the principle of the binding force of final court rulings… and the prohibition of existence of two rulings between the same parties which resolve the same issue differently…, obligation to specify in the contract the essentialia negotii thereof… .

5. [T]here is a great deal of autonomy in arbitration, entirely consistent with the intention of lawmakers, distinctly limiting the availability of state court review. The basic goal of arbitration is to expedite the procedure for resolving civil disputes, not to create an additional phase of pre-judicial procedure, or a judicial procedure similar to an explanatory procedure. Parties who decide to submit a dispute to arbitration must thus take into account such conditions, including also the limited external review of arbitration awards.

6. [W]hen considering a petition to set aside an arbitration award, a state court generally does not review the ruling of the arbitral tribunal on the merits, and in particular does not review whether the award is founded on the facts cited in the reasoning or whether such facts were correctly determined.

7. [T]he only necessary elements of the reasoning of an arbitration award are findings on which the arbitral tribunal relied and the circumstances which the arbitral tribunal deemed necessary to examine in the case.

1. One of the fundamental principles of the legal order, provided for in Art. 45 (1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, is the right to court, an element of which is a party’s right to have its case heard by an independent court, in a fairly conducted procedure. The indicated principle of the legal order applies to all court proceedings, including arbitration proceedings.

2. In the light of Art. 1173 § 1 of the PCPC, an arbitrator shall be an independent and impartial person. … . This refers to the absence of such relations between an arbitrator and parties to a dispute which could affect the content of the award.

3. [I]t is indicated in the case law that it is only exceptionally permissible to invoke circumstances previously known to a party concerning an arbitrator and to invoke non-operation of the preclusion of the grounds for exclusion of the arbitrator in a situation when it comes to the circumstances of such a kind in which the arbitrator’s participation in rendering an award by an arbitral tribunal could be found to be justifying that the award is contrary to the fundamental principles of the public policy… .

Mere demonstration of possible errors of an arbitral tribunal in the conduct of the proceedings or in the assessment of the gathered material or in the accepted legal assessment of the asserted claims is not sufficient to successfully challenge an arbitration award before a state court. It may be done only in case of existence of gross and cardinal misconducts by the arbitral tribunal causing that the acceptance of the award rendered by the arbitral tribunal would almost obviously be impossible due to a violation of the fundamental principles of procedural or substantive law.

1. [I]n proceedings initiated by a petition to set aside an arbitration award (…) a state court does not examine the accuracy of the assessment of evidence taken by an arbitral tribunal, the correctness of factual findings, the accuracy of interpretation or application of rules of the substantive law; a state court does not assess the accuracy of a specific method of resolving a litigious legal relationship by an arbitral tribunal (…).

2. The essence of a petition to set aside an arbitration award is to create a control mechanism which respects, on the one hand, the distinctiveness and autonomy of arbitration, on the other hand, prevents functioning of arbitration awards which are in breach of the rule of law in the legal order. 

3. The proceedings initiated by a petition to set aside an arbitration award do not lead to a substantive re-examination of the dispute between the parties, (…) but the aim of these proceedings is only to verify the claims of the petitioner concerning the statutory grounds for setting aside an arbitration award cited in the petition.

1. The essence of arbitration consists of three principles: (i) the non-state character of arbitration, (ii) joint will of the parties as the source of jurisdiction to resolve the dispute and (iii) equating the legal force of an arbitration award with the legal force of a state court judgment.

2. A state court ruling on recognition or enforcement of an arbitration award results in ascribing to the award the same force that rulings of state courts have, which is clearly confirmed by Art. 1212 § 1 of the PCPC. Such an award, thanks to the state court ruling connected with it, must be treated in legal dealings the same as any other ruling of a state court, i.a. it has all the features indicated in Art. 365 § 1 of the PCPC.

3. The purpose of proceedings initiated by a petition to set aside an arbitration award is only to verify the petitioner’s pleadings presented in the petition as to existence of the grounds referred to in Art. 1206 § 1 of the PCPC, and to assess if any of the prerequisites referred to in Art. 1206 § 2 of the PCPC exist.

4. [T]he validity and efficiency of an arbitration agreement shall be determined by the law in force at the time when the arbitration agreement was concluded… .

5. The agreement [arbitration agreement – insertion added] does not identify individual parties to the dispute, but the legal relationship or the object of a dispute, therefore certain claims (receivables), as a result of the arbitration agreement, have such a feature that disputes concerning them shall be resolved by an arbitral tribunal.

6. If a given legal relationship has been submitted to arbitration, the arbitral tribunal retains its jurisdiction to resolve the case, however, as a result of the assignment, the assignor, as a matter of principle, loses the ability to dispose of the claim in the substantive-law sense, in fact loses its ability to settle.

7. The public policy clause covers both the procedural and the substantive fundamental principles of the legal order. Procedural public policy may be a ground for assessing an arbitration award in two aspects. First, the procedure which led to rendering of the arbitration award is assessed for its compliance with the fundamental principles of the legal order, second, the effects of the arbitration award are assessed from the perspective of their consistency with the procedural public policy, i.e. whether they are reconcilable with the system of procedural law. On the other hand, a violation by an arbitral tribunal of the substantive law applicable to the resolution of the legal relationship from which the dispute referred to arbitration arose, legitimates setting aside of the award, only if it is connected with a violation of the fundamental principles of the legal order. At the same time, in the event of non-compliance of an award with the fundamental principles of the legal order, the question is not whether the award is compliant with all absolutely binding provisions of law, but whether the award has had an effect which is irreconcilable with the fundamental principles of the state legal order… .

8. The principle of interpretation of declarations of will is covered by the public policy clause. … The principle of freedom of contracts is also one of the fundamental principles of the substantive legal public policy.

1. [T[he fundamental principles of legal order shall be understood not only as constitutional norms, but also as ground rules in particular fields of law, and this applies both to national regulations and regulations resulting from the EU legislation in force in Poland, both of substantive and procedural nature.

2. [P]rocedural public policy may be a ground for assessing an arbitration award in two aspects. First, the procedure which led to rendering of the arbitration award is assessed for its compliance with the fundamental principles of the legal order, second, the effects of the arbitration award are assessed from the perspective of their consistency with the procedural public policy, i.e. whether they are reconcilable with the system of procedural law. On the other hand, a violation by an arbitral tribunal of the substantive law applicable to the resolution of the legal relationship from which the dispute referred to arbitration arose, legitimates setting aside of the award only if it is connected with a violation of the fundamental principles of the legal order.

3. The public policy clause, like any general clause, is indeterminate, which leaves the court seized of a particular case with a wide range of discretion. By application of this clause, the point is not to determine whether the award is consistent with all relevant mandatorily applicable legal regulations, but to determine whether the award effected a result contrary to the fundamental principles of the domestic legal order. Substantive review of an arbitration awards is therefore limited to violation of the principles of legal order.

4. [G]rounds for setting aside an arbitration award may only include qualified violations of substantive or procedural law, which mean that an arbitration award is irreconcilable with the legal standards considered to be fundamental to the functioning of the legal system as such. This means that mere misinterpretation of the substantive law or misapplication thereof by an arbitral tribunal does not justify upholding of the petition even if there would be a violation of mandatory provisions… .

5. The broad scope of autonomy granted by the lawmaker to the arbitral tribunal, including judicial autonomy, excludes the possibility of a state court to make independent factual findings in proceedings initiated by a petition to set aside an arbitration award, or to review – beyond the aforementioned scope – the findings constituting the factual basis of an arbitration award, by which a state court is in principle bound… . A state court is neither a second-instance court with reference to arbitration awards, which excludes the possibility of rendering a reformatory ruling.

6. [A]n assessment whether an arbitration award does not violate the fundamental principles of the legal order shall be formulated carefully, narrowly and on the basis of the facts of a particular case.

7. It is permissible to seek damages on the basis of general principles with a simultaneous demand to publish a statement of appropriate content. The combination of two measures, as in the present case, cannot itself speak in favour of their excessive repressiveness, and to such an extent that would justify the setting aside of the contested award according to Art. 1206 § 2 point 2 of the PCPC.