Remembrance of Things Past
— a reply to Stefan Lindskog’s argument that only a traditional hearing is a hearing in arbitration
Av advokaten KRISTOFFER LÖF1
I artikeln ”Virtuella slutförhandlingar i skiljeförfaranden mot parts bestridande”, SvJT 2021 s. 293, redogör Stefan Lindskog för sin syn på frågan huruvida en virtuell slutförhandling utgör en muntlig förhandling enligt
24 § 1 st. 2 men. lagen (1999:116) om skiljeförfarande. Lindskog kommer till slutsatsen att endast en fysisk förhandling uppfyller lagens krav på muntlig förhandling. I denna artikel besvaras frågan på motsatt vis: en virtuell slutförhandling utgör en muntlig förhandling i lagens mening och detta finner stöd i en lång rad rättskällor. Lindskogs syn på frågan avviker från vad som anses gälla i andra länder och den svenska debatten i ämnet har därför väckt visst internationellt intresse. Av den anledningen är denna artikel skriven på engelska.
1 Introduction
Stefan Lindskog is arguably the leading authority on Swedish arbitration law. His commentary to the Swedish Arbitration Act is one of those rare works of Swedish legal literature that has reached the standing of quasi-law, regularly being referred to by courts to support their decisions and sometimes used as a legal source of higher hierarchy than the travaux préparatoires and case law. We are fortunate as a legal community to have such an authority and prolific commentator in the arbitration field (which is only one of the fields in which Lindskog has reached this standing).
But on the few occasions when Lindskog gives expression to a legal conclusion that is incorrect, this exceptional standing may cause confusion as to the current status of law which would not have been the case had the incorrect conclusion been expressed by a commentator of lesser standing. In my respectful submission, now is one of those occasions. In an article in SvJT which has generated debate already in preprint, Stefan Lindskog argues that a ‘virtual hearing’ in arbitration does not meet the requirement of a hearing under the Arbitration Act. Lindskog has expressed the same view in his commentary to the Arbitration Act, but there the legal rationale for the position is not as
1 Kristoffer Löf is advokat and co-chair of the dispute resolution group at Mannheimer Swartling. He is also a member of the executive committee of the Swedish Arbitration Association and of the advisory board of Stockholm International Hearing Centre. The author is in debt to Sara Johnsson and Peder Mühlenbock of Mannheimer Swartling for research assistance with this article.