Singapore court junks ‘copy-paste’ arbitration award handed down by ex-CJI Misra

The Court of Appeal of Singapore has upheld the annulment of an international arbitration award chaired by former Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra after discovering that nearly half the decision --47% or 212 out of 451 paragraphs --was copied verbatim from earlier awards he had authored in separate but related disputes.

The tribunal’s “copy-paste” approach, the court held, violated core principles of natural justice and raised serious concerns about bias, fairness and the integrity of the arbitral process. The Court of Appeal, led by chief justice Sundaresh Menon and justice Steven Chong, noted in its judgment on April 8 that the award “was prepared using the Parallel Awards as templates to a very substantial degree” without regard to material differences in arguments, contracts or context.

The dispute stemmed from a contract between a special-purpose vehicle managing freight corridors in India and a consortium of three infrastructure companies. At issue was whether a 2017 Indian government notification on revised minimum wages entitled the consortium to higher payments. When negotiations failed, the matter went to arbitration in Singapore under the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Rules.

The arbitral tribunal, comprising justice Misra as presiding arbitrator and two co-arbitrators, justices Krishn Kumar Lahoti and Gita Mittal, ruled in favour of the consortium in November 2023. However, the award was soon challenged before the Singapore International Commercial Court, which found that large parts of the ruling were lifted wholesale from two prior arbitration awards authored by justice Misra in similar disputes involving different parties. That finding has now been affirmed by the Court of Appeal.

Justice Misra did not respond to requests for comment.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling identified three key grounds where natural justice was compromised. The Court found that using previous awards as templates without modification led to a strong appearance of prejudgment. A fair-minded observer, the judges said, would “reasonably suspect that the tribunal had approached the arbitration with a closed mind.”

The court flagged cognitive biases such as “anchoring bias”, where early conclusions in one case unduly influence decisions in another, and “confirmation bias”—favouring outcomes aligned with past beliefs. Given that nearly half the text was copied without tailoring it to the facts of this case, the Court concluded the tribunal likely failed to consider the matter afresh.

“We are amply satisfied that a fair-minded observer… would have concluded that the integrity of the decision-making process had been compromised,” the Court ruled.

Second, the Court underlined undisclosed reliance on extraneous material. The tribunal drew heavily from prior arbitrations that the parties to the present dispute had no access to. By lifting and relying on arguments and factual assumptions from other proceedings, the tribunal deprived the parties of their right to be heard.

“The patently substantial material derived from the Parallel Arbitrations were extraneous considerations that had not been raised to the parties’ attention... The Award could not be prepared by such a process,” held the Court, finding a clear breach of the fair hearing rule.

The decision also pointed up inequality among arbitrators. While justice Misra had presided over the previous cases, the two co-arbitrators, justices Lahoti and Mittal, had not. The Court noted that they were placed in an “unequal position,” unaware of the origins and context of nearly half the final award, yet expected to co-sign it.

“The expectation of equality as between the arbitrators was compromised… They would thus have had no direct access to any material or knowledge derived from those proceedings, but which appeared to have significantly influenced the outcome.” This imbalance, the Court found, further undermined the integrity of the award and the credibility of the arbitral process.

While the Court refrained from making any findings of bad faith or misconduct on the part of justice Misra or the tribunal, it underscored that the procedural shortcuts taken had rendered the award unsustainable.