Appointment of Arbitrator

Hot on the heels of the Sino v Dana decision (reported in our blog on 16 November), the Commercial Court considered the question of notice of appointment of an arbitrator once again in Glencore Agriculture BV (formerly Glencore Grain BV) v Conqueror Holdings Limited [2017] EWHC 2893.

This is another case where the Respondent (Glencore as Charterer) took no part in the arbitration and was unaware of the proceedings until it received the Award.

It is different, however, to the Sino v Dana case in that the Notice of Arbitration was sent to the email address of an employee of the Respondent and the issue was whether the Notice of Arbitration and Notice under Section 17 Arbitration Act 1996 (appointing the Claimant's arbitrator as sole arbitrator) were validly served on the Respondent by being sent to that individual's email address. He was characterised as a relatively junior employee, and the Court distinguished the position where a Notice is sent to an individual employee's email account to that in the Eastern Navigator [2006] 1 Lloyd's Rep 537 where the relevant email address was a generic email address, given as the company's email address in Lloyd's Maritime directory and on the company website, and determined to be held out to the world as the only email address of the company.

It was held that whether an email addressed to an individual's email address is good service on the company for which he works, must depend upon the particular role which the named individual plays or is held out as playing within the organisation. The agency principles are to be applied, being "the principles which govern whether the acts of an employee bind the company". Whether a company is bound by notification to an employee depends...