On 24 October 2011, a soccer club filed a setting-aside petition against an international arbitral award rendered by a tribunal at the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS). The petition was filed within the 30-day statutory deadline and invoked the grounds of appeal in Articles 393(c), (e), and (f) of the new Swiss Code of Civil Procedure (CCP). That article, however, applies to domestic arbitrations only. The only grounds for setting aside an international arbitral award in Switzerland are stated in Article 190(2) of the Private International Law Act (PILA). On 13 February 2012, the petitioner filed a reply seeking to correct its error. The Supreme Court rejected this attempt, holding that the reply brief is not intended to allow parties to invoke grounds not raised within the non-extendable 30-day deadline.

It seems that despite the fact that the wrong reasons for appeal were submitted in time, the Supreme Court would have nevertheless considered one of them (failure to adjudicate one of the prayers for relief under Article 393(c) CCP) on the basis that this ground corresponds to Article 190(2)(c) PILA. However, the Court decided that it did not need to decide whether the petition might be admissible on that ground because, in any event, the petition would fail on the merits: first, it was insufficiently specific and secondly, the operative section of the award included a decision that "all other or further claims and counterclaims are dismissed," which excluded the possibility that the arbitral tribunal had omitted to decide on one of the prayers for relief and thus had violated Article 190(2)(c) PILA.

The decision shows that parties must invoke all grounds – and the correct grounds – for setting aside international arbitral awards within the 30-day deadline after receipt of the award.

Case: 4A_652/2011