Summary

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida

Opinion of the Court 21-14408
D.C. Docket No. 1:20-cv-24867-RNS

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, Chief Judge, and HULL, and MARCUS, Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

This appeal requires us to decide whether the losing party to an international arbitration can obtain a vacatur of the award because the arbitrators failed to disclose their involvement in unrelated arbitrations. After Grupo Unidos por el Canal, SA, received two adverse awards amounting to more than a quarter-billion dollars in an arbitration arising out of its construction work on the Panama Canal, Grupo Unidos sought wide-ranging disclosures from each of the three members of the panel pertaining to possible bias. Each arbitrator disclosed for the first time that he had served on panels in other, unrelated arbitrations in which an arbitrator or counsel involved in Grupo Unidos's arbitration also participated.

Following the disclosures of the new information, Grupo Unidos challenged the impartiality of the arbitrators before the International Court of Arbitration ("ICA") of the International Chamber of Commerce. The ICA agreed that some arbitrators failed to make a few disclosures but, notably, did not find any basis for removal and rejected Grupo Unidos's challenges on the merits. Thereafter, Grupo Unidos moved -- unsuccessfully -- for the vacatur of the awards in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Autoridad del Canal de Panama, in turn, cross-moved for confirmation of the awards, which the district court granted.

Grupo Unidos timely appealed this decision in our Court, arguing that the awards should either be vacated or not confirmed under three different provisions of Article V of the New York Convention. But, after oral argument, this Court, sitting en banc, held that Chapter 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act -- not Article V of the New York Convention -- provides the proper grounds for vacatur of international arbitration awards where the New York Convention governs and the United States is the primary jurisdiction. Corporación AIC, SA v. Hidroeléctrica Santa Rita SA, 66 F.4th 876, 880 (11th Cir. 2023) (en banc). Thus, the questions for us are whether the two arbitral awards at issue in this case should be vacated under Chapter 1 of the Federal Arbitration Act or not confirmed under Article V of the New York Convention.

Because we agree with the International Court of Arbitration and the district court that Grupo Unidos has presented nothing that comes near the high threshold required for vacatur, we affirm the denial of vacatur and the confirmation of the awards.

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