Pursuant to the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, codified at 9 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. (the "Convention"), Petitioner, a German corporation, sought an order confirming a final arbitration award of a money judgment against Respondent, a Turkish national, issued by a Swiss tribunal. In opposition to Petitioner's motion to confirm the final award, Respondent argued, among other things, that the final award was so ambiguous as to be unenforceable.
The District Court, however, was not persuaded by that argument. Specifically, the Court held, "[w]hatever ambiguity existed by looking solely to the award section of the Final Award, it is resolvable by the record and the Arbitral Tribunal's thorough Final Award opinion; it is clear what the Arbitral Tribunal decided." More significant was the Court's holding on ambiguity as grounds for refusal to confirm the award generally. In this regard, the Court held that "[w]hen sitting in secondary jurisdiction, as the Second Circuit has recently reminded district courts, the parameters within which a district court may refuse enforcement are rigidly circumscribed: '[T]he [New York] Convention is equally clear that when an action for enforcement is brought in a foreign state, the state may refuse to enforce the award only on the grounds explicitly set forth in Article V of the [New York] Convention.'" Therefore, because ambiguity is not a ground "explicitly set forth" in Article V, the Court determined that it is not a ground for consideration when determining whether or not to confirm a foreign award. BSH Hausgeräte GMBH v. Jak Kamhi, Case No. 17-5776, (USDC S.D.N.Y. Mar. 3, 2018).
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