A billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon, it adds up to a real justice system–or at any rate one worth writing about. The world’s patchwork system of private dispute resolution, better known as international arbitration, has produced more than 100 disputes with stakes of at least $1 billion that were active during 2009 and 2010. The object of this survey is to follow the money.
ALM’s 2011 Arbitration Scorecard shines a light on 113 billion-dollar cases: 65 based on old-fashioned contracts and 48 based at least in part on investment treaties or legislation. The full survey, available online at americanlawyer.com/focuseurope, captures a total of 261 eligible disputes: treaty cases with stakes of at least $100 million and contract cases with stakes of at least half a billion. Information on these often-confidential cases is drawn from attorney questionnaires, supplemented by reporting and the harvesting of public sources. Arbitration’s dirty secret is that the biggest cases are rarely secret; they leak out in domestic court actions, securities disclosures, the local press, and the trade press.
