The central issue for the court was to determine the correct approach under Part 6 of the ILO, where the existence of an arbitration agreement is disputed. In particular, in refusing to exercise jurisdiction, these PRC jurisdictions have not always taken into account the principle of jurisdiction or the intention of the parties to resolve disputes through arbitration proceedings. Instead, „arbitration“ was considered a question of CPP law and, in particular, whether the existence of an arbitration agreement would be part of the importance of „validity“ within the meaning of section 20 of the CPP Arbitration Act. Relevant Facts: Victims of a predatory „payday“ credit trap sued the lender, a check case. The documents they signed as part of the predatory loan included a forced arbitration clause. The applicants brought a class action in which they alleged, among other things, usurious interests which, on the face of it, made the contract illegal. The cheque fund invoked arbitration. „It is true,“ the court continued, „that the Prima Paint rule allows a court to impose an arbitration agreement in a contract that the arbitrator later finds invalid. But it is also true that [the consumer] approach allows a court to refuse an arbitration provision in a contract that the court will later find perfectly applicable. Prima Paint solved this conundrum and solved it in favour of separate applicability from arbitration rules. We say today that, whether the challenge is brought before a federal or regional court, a challenge to the validity of the contract as a whole, and not specifically the compromise clause, must be addressed to the arbitrator. This article analyzes the scope of the award arbitration agreement. In most cases, the question of the validity or scope of a compromise clause returns to the court where Part A initiates legal proceedings, and Part B seeks to suspend confidence in an alleged compromise clause. In such cases, the regulated approach is that the court generally makes a decision on jurisdiction over the evidence before it, rather than leaving it to the arbitrators to do so.
In British Telecommunications plc/SAE Group Inc [2009], EWHC 252 (TCC) Ramsey J held that an equivalent approach should be taken when Part A seeks to declare that there is no arbitration agreement. But what if the existence of the arbitration agreement is in doubt – for example, a party could argue that it was not a signatory to the arbitration agreement or that the arbitration agreement was obtained fraudulently? Would these reasons „invalidate“ an arbitration agreement? Neither the CPP`s arbitration law nor the interpretation of the CPS clearly answers these questions, and the practice of THE PRC courts remains divided. The applicant submitted that the signing of the guarantee was not its own, which means that there is no valid arbitration agreement between the parties and that, therefore, the Singapore courts, not the tribunal (which was already constituted), have jurisdiction to establish the existence of the arbitration agreement. The Court of Cassation, which had supported the trial judgment, stated incontability that the compromise clause was a civil law contract and that, as such, it could be challenged independently of the underlying agreement.
