Growing Potential for Procedural Misconduct in Unadministered Maritime Arbitrations

It is in the best interests of the maritime industry and the arbitrators’ fraternity to ensure that the ADR forums provide finality and an effective resolution of the disputes submitted to the arbitral tribunals. The procedural misconduct or serious irregularities may surface at early stages of arbitration. When such issues are not supervised or managed well, then it will often lead to challenges, highly contagious and contentious disputes. Such cases raise questions about the legitimacy and efficacy of arbitration as one stop dispute resolution process. This paper reflects upon the inherent potential for challenges and occurrence of actual procedural misconduct, due to the default arbitration rules in various standard Charter Party Forms. The underlying proposition is that institutional rules with administered arbitration circumvent the danger of procedural misconduct to a greater extent as compared to the un-administered arbitrations